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ROSSNOWLAGH |
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ROSSNOWLAGH lies on the coast away from the main Donegal Road, with
good cliffs for walks overlooking a magnificent expanse of beach that is
raked by Atlantic surf and is also, sadly, sometimes blighted by boy-racers.
Appropriately titled - its name translates as "The Heavenly Cove" -
Rossnowlagh has a private surfing club beside the Sand House Hotel (tel
072/51777, info@sandhouse-hotel.ie ; £110-130/¬139.67-165.07), but one
of the many surfing buffs will probably be able to help you out with
equipment, or at least advise where else to acquire some. The village is
also the site of the only Orange Order parade in the Republic, which
takes place on the weekend before July 12th. There's a cliff-top B&B at
Ard-na-Mara House (tel 072/51141; £40-55/¬50.79-69.84) and nearby, the
splendidly situated Smugglers Creek inn does excellent food and has
music at weekends.
The Franciscan friary nearby on the Donegal road houses a captivating
one-room museum (daily 10am-6pm; free), run by the Donegal Historical
Society and crammed with Stone Age flints, Bronze Age dagger blades,
penal crosses, pistols and other local miscellany. This includes a
lovely set of uilleann pipes with green felt bag and very handsome
regulators, a fiddle that belonged to the great piper Tarlach MacSuibhne
(himself buried at Magheragallon cemetery, Gweedore) and a seventeenth-century
Flemish painting on glass ( The Christ of Pity ) used as a devotion
plate. A mile north of Rossnowlagh towards Ballintra lies Glasbolie Fort
, a huge earthen rampart 20ft high and nearly 900ft round, said to have
been the burial place of a sixth-century High King of Ireland.
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