The Bluestack Way: Lough Eske to Letterfad

Day Two You'll be starting Day Two where Day One finished - by the gates at the back of Lough Eske Castle. You'll by carrying on down the hill until you see the stone marker for Harvey's Point on your right. Famine pot Straight after the Harvey's Point T junction is the Famine Pot on the left. As you approach this major landmark, look out for some California Redwood in the Coillte wood near the Famine Pot. They're relatively young trees so don't expect to see the likes of the massive beauties around the Big Sur in the Golden State. From this pot the impoverished locals were fed during the Great Hunger of the late 1840s. There's further signage about the area by the pot, as well as a good car park and a looped walk starting right beside the pot. The famine of the 1840s or the Great Hunger, caused by a complete failure of the potato crop, was the most devastating event in 19th century Ireland. The famine pot at Lough Eske reminds us of that sorry period when a million people died of starvation and famine related disease and another million plus were forced to emigrate from the likes of The Hassans near Donegal Town, many of them to die in the coffin ships before reaching their destination. Up until very recently, the area still had a handful of locals who could recount some poignant tale in their own family which has been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Jim McMullin, from Meenadreen was one such local who recalled many harrowing stories told to him by his grandfather who was one of the lucky ones to live through the famine and die naturally in 1911. The ancient local residents are long gone, but won't be forgotten. Their biggest mark being the wedge tomb in Winterhill and the Cairn tomb in the nearby townland of Tawnavorgal. Other people who left an indelible mark on the landscape arrived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and, over the next two hundred years were to put a name on every stone, cliff, lough and stream that was to be found in the 147 stacks or hills around here - the Stack of the Big Man, The Mountain Breast of the Three Streams, The Low Hill of the Skulls, the Stack of the Lake of the Disappearing Water and the Hill of the Smooth Place of the Mice were all named by them.

Turn left for Harvey's Point Coming back from the Famine Pot, you'll be taking a left here down towards the lough and to Harvey's Point. As mentioned, the roads here are busier than perhaps the road builders intended so be careful and keep well in off the road when you hear a car approaching. As you make your way down, you'll notice a derelict edifice through the woods on the right - this was once the O'Donnell's stronghold in the Lough Eske area. We'll tell you more about them along the way. In the audio piece, you learn about the mythological warriors, the Fianna, who used to hunt in these parts.

Eske Angling Centre - There can be few more enjoyable pastimes than angling. John Buchan observed that the charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive, but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. The lough and its tributaries are popular for fishing, especially for spring salmon, sea trout and char, with the season running from 1 March to 31 September. Tight lines! For information in-season (1 May to 30 September) contact: Eske Angling Centre, Lough Eske Demesne. Tel: 0749740781. As the centre will not be open all the time for the 2012 season, you can also contact the Fisheries Office in Ballyshannon first to check opening hours. For information off-season contact: Northern Regional Fisheries Board, Station Road, Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal. Tel. +353(0)719851435 Licence Fees in 2014 National Annual Licence e120 District Licence e58 21-day Licence e46 One-day Licence e32 Juvenile Licence (under 17) e18 Permit Fees in 2014 Note: You must have a permit as well as a fishing licence. Daily Adult Permit e30 Daily Juvenile Permit e12 Weekly Permit (seven days' fishing e150) Permits are available for collection from the Eske Angling Centre, Lough Eske Demesne, just before Harvey's Point Country hotel. Tel: +353(0)749740781. Boat Hire for Lough Eske Boat hire is e35 per day not including engine. This price does not include your angling permit. If you are fishing then you will need a fishing permit. Boat hire and an angling permit for one person is e50 inclusive. To purchase boat hire and angling permits for two people the cost is e80 inclusive. Maximum of two people per boat.

The Bluestack Mountains, North East Range

The trace of the Belshade fault trends down the Eglish valley and lies at the foot of the hills and marks the contact between the Carboniferous rocks and the Barnesmore granite, the hills in the centre and west are Precambrian Lough Mourne Schists. The contact between the granite and the schists lies in the little valley between the two ridges. The rock types can be differentiated at a distance by the steep faces that form in the granite and the sloping faces that represent the Lough Mourne Schists. Along the ridges to the west are two knobs of rock. These are smaller granite outcrops related to Barnesmore granite and their distinctive knobbly shape indicates their difference from the Lough Mourne Schists. The slope profile of the western part of the ridge changes from steep at the top to shallower at the bottom and marks the trace of a second fault - the Boundary Fault. Coinciding with this change in slope is a change in vegetation that is reflecting the underlying rocks. The heather-dominated lower slopes of the western part of the hill are Carboniferous sandstones while the grassier parts are Upper Mourne Schists. Travelling down the valley, there are examples of houses abandoned during the famine, lazy beds and stone kilns used to burn limestone to provide fertiliser.

Directions Exiting the Eglish valley turn right and follow the road across the Meenataggart river. At the next junction the main road turns left but the Bluestack Way carries straight ahead. The old tumbled down shed on the right was once a thriving dance hall known locally as Meenataggart Hall. Meenataggart Hall Meenataggart Hall was one of the three community halls in the area where dances and meetings were held on a regular basis until the 1950s. People came on foot and by bicycle from a 15-20km radius to attend the dances on a Sunday evening. Dances started at 8.30pm and ended at midnight. The admission charge was 6d (3 cents). However, Christmas night dances went on until 2.30am and cost 1 shilling to attend (6 cents).

Blue Stack Range

Directions Follow the roadway to the white house: the path that follows the fencing on your right almost to the end of the field. It then swings left and leads the walker to a gate through the next fence and then downhill to another gate and the ruins of an old farmhouse, then to the bank of the Eanymore river. For a short distance the pathways follow the river bank before crossing the Eanymore water. Crossing the river one is treated to an impressive sight of the falls and rapids of the river cascading across the rocks. This sight is all the more impressive when the river is in spate. The river gets its source higher up in the Bluestacks; it boasts a good quantity of salmon, brown and sea trout.

Patrick Campbell was born in Meenawilderg in 1911 and from an early age developed a deep interest in his surroundings. A generous and thoughtful man, his writings reflect a natural turn of phrase that the locals used in everyday vernacular. A transgression was thus excused as 'God bless the poor creature, sure he was sore tormented by a nagging wife' and so on. Patrick got a wake up call on being hired out to farmers from the Donegal Hiring Fairs that took place every May and November. He worked ten 6-month consecutive contracts with farmers in many parts of south-west Donegal, attaining a greater understanding of human nature and the need to improve his own station in life. We're grateful to his Estate for the use of material from his two classic books, 'Rambles around Donegal' and 'From Silent Glens to Noisy Streets' - try and get your hands on either one as mandatory research prior to walking the Way!

Patrick Campbell wrote that the menfolk of the Crugha Gorma "were experts in sheep stock and famous for their knowledge of those mountains and hills. Their sheep dogs only understood commands in the Irish language, and like many other mountain districts in Donegal, it has never been known of anyone to leave Sruhill without refreshment in plenty. In the summers of the 1920s on Sunday evenings, I often witnessed a house full of visitors and sheep farmers, all enjoying the big bowls of good strong tea and beautiful pot-oven cake, capped with the finest home-made butter. The big decorative bowl was filled so generously that if you were to slip your spoon in it, you would have to seek the assistance of your knife to fish it out. Those were the times we enjoyed such refreshments which were given by people whose hearts were as big as their hills, those great people the Kennedys and Kennys of Sruhill, the Gasur Mors (the big boys). The green braes to each side of the Grey Mare's Tail, which are continually watered from its spray, give a pleasant freshness to that mountainside, and a tasty run for mountain rabbits which are always plentiful there. This is the early source of the Eanymore river which ends in Inver Bay and provides the earnest fisherman with many pleasant hours. It also, no doubt made an impression on many emigrants who left its shores and the feeling of those people can be felt in the words of the songwriter, Patrick Ramsey in his song 'The Banks of the Sweet Eanymore': - "How I dream of that dear place, as if it were for me The purling rills of Sruhill Hills, perhaps no more to see, It's far away I deemed to stray across the western tide, To view those hills and other rills far away from Eanny's side The shape of the valley was cut from a V-shaped river valley by a glacier in the ice age. The erosion by the ice cut away the lower sections of the streams on the sides of the valley and now form 'hanging valleys' with waterfalls. The Grey Mare's Tail waterfall is an example of this. The rocks of the sides of the Sruell valley are the Lough Mourne Schists and the Barnesmore granite at the end of the valley. "

Grey Mares Tail Follow the path straight from the river for approx. 20m then right along the laneway to the main road. Once at the road, turn right towards the mountains, following the course of the Eanymore on your right. Walking along the road towards the mountains one can see into the Sruell valley with an impressive waterfall on its left slope, known locally as the Grey Mare's Tail. This fall has its source in a lake on top of the mountain known as Lough Asgarha in the townland of Binnasruell. Sruell comes from sruth meaning stream. Flora bog cotton, butterworth, St. Patrick's cabbage, tormentil and wild violets. To the left of the Grey Mare's Tail is the 505m Binnasruell. Beyond it is a walk into the Sruell valley up to 671m Lavagh More and 650m Lavagh Beg. Lavagh translates into Leamhach referring to elm, which was once common in Irish woodlands. Also once common was elm, which suffered from overuse by humans, especially the Vikings, and Dutch elm disease. Patrick Cambell writes 'Sitting by the window in the Kennedy home, attention is drawn to the Scardan, that big waterfall on the north mountain in the Sruhill townland. This part of the townland north of the river has been locally called "far Sruhill. Ruball na Larach Baine (The Grey Mare's Tail) which this fall resembles so much, begins its long journey from a mountain lake named Lough Eascartha which is tucked in a valley behind one of the high cliffs on the north Sruhill side. This cliff or spink is called the Cock of Sruhill or Coilleach na Sruthaille. The stream from this lough runs in an irregular direction and spills over the cliff from a height of about 1,800 feet and falls into another stream which runs southwest from Sruhill gap. This waterfall can be seen from a considerable distance and while in spate sends a foam all along its precipitous course.

Local writers such as Paul Peppergrass, Patrick MacGill and Seamus MacManus emigrated to America but one American bucked the trend and came to Donegal leaving behind the leafy arches of Harvard for Meenaguish deep in the Bluestacks between 1970 and 1984. Bob Bernen wrote two books out of his experience, Tales from the Bluestacks and The Hills, which recall his experience of the lifestyle and stories he heard from the area. In the Foreword to the first book, Bernen wrote: 'Ten miles north of Donegal Town, in the extreme north west of Ireland, runs a range of low, rounded hills known as the Blue Stacks. Technically they are classed as mountains but to the ordinary eye, they look like hills. Their name - taken from the Irish name of the highest peak - Croagh Gorm, is fitting, for from a distance they always appear a deep, purple blue, even on the clearest days. Around these hills lives a small group of farmers whose lives continue to be rooted in the eighteenth-century patterns, or earlier. Technologically and agriculturally their methods scarcely reveal modern influence. Today, we read about ancient and medieval technology which can still be seen in use on Blue Stack farms, some of them home-made in forms that have long since disappeared elsewhere. Machines are seldom used. Into this bit of anachronous farming community a modern man and his wife moved, to farm sheep and to live in the manner of their neighbors. Some of what they heard, saw or experienced is recorded in the following tales. The tales are therefore unlike fiction, which falsifies in order to achieve a greater effect. The aim here has been to preserve a true picture of some aspects of Blue Stack life at the moment of its final disappearance, and as it fades into the modern world around it.' Dealing with individual stand-alone chapters, the books present a picture of a community farming without machines, the interaction of men and animals and a deeper understanding of the life around them and of the earth and the living things that come from it.

Meenaguse Lough sits on a glacial deposit and together with the small lake to the east may represent 'kettle hole' lakes. These lakes formed as the ice sheets retreated, leaving behind large blocks of ice, isolated from the main ice mass, which were partially or completely buried by sand and gravel. When the ice melted, hollows were left which now often contain lakes. The derelict house on the north side of the road with abundant fuchsia surrounding it was the residence of the aforementioned Bob Bermen during the 1970s.

Patrick Campbell wrotes: -'On our way we pass by a famous bog in Clogher where in my young years was used extensively by large farmers who came several miles to cut and save turf, and paid them two shillings and sixpence per day. They claimed that a mountain man would cut more turf in one day than they themselves would cut in two days. They usually save the turf themselves and towards the harvest time it was not unusual to see up to ten horses load of good black turf homeland bound, as the sun was sinking behind the hills. What a charming scene or picture this made, with fine well-groomed horses and bright red painted carts fitted with high turf creels and well crivined* loads of good dry black turf. There was a contented look on each man's suntanned face, as he sat and smoked his pipe on a sack of hay on top of his load of turf, and listened to the hollow sound of cartwheels as they rolled over the stone-surfaced road in the silence of an autumn evening'. *The crivin is the 'top' on a creel of turf.

Directions At the next road on the left, the pathway swings into the hills. Some distance up this road, the walker meets a gate and a little further on, you turn right towards the hill top. Follow the tarmac path to the gate and long the straight rugged path to the next left turn. Walking along this bog road, one can see where active turf cutting takes place. Here the peat is extracted from the bog, then dried and stored for winter fuel. To the right hand side of this road no turf cutting takes place as it is a special area of conservation. Follow the pathway left through this turf cutting area, stay on the path which swings left and onwards downhill past a little cottage on your left and further on through a gate to the main road where you again turn right towards the mountains.