Crohy Head

Seamus from Walking Donegal was our guide while on holiday in Donegal. I love roving free in my own home county but I’m a big fan of guides if I want to make the most of a new place that I might only visit the once.

Seamus parked beside Crohy GAA pitch on a typical morning in June and warned us to be careful that the wind did not catch the doors on us. I squinted into the horizontal rain. I could just about see a tower way off in the distance. That was where we were heading.

crohy beach donegal

We walked across the beach, picking our way carefully around a bluff with slippery rocks until we found a quiet bay. The last time Seamus was here, he told us, he had a picnic on the beach. Strands of seaweed ran the length of the bay leaving a record of last night’s storm. We tramped across the wet sand and jumped the run-off streams that flowed back down from the hills.

crohy beach donegal

At the end of the bay, we climbed up into the bracken and went across an old gate into a field of long grass. We hiked up the hill along a cliff face.

cliff walk crohy donegal

Ahead of us was an old kelp house. These appeared around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Minerals like soda and iodine could no longer be imported. Kelp provided a solution. The seaweed was collected from the shore, dried and burned for 8 hours. It gave off a foul toxic smoke and it produced a blue oily substance that had to be cooled. It could then be used for making soap and glass and bleaching linen. After Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, the industry collapsed. Another boom was over.

crohy kelp house donegal
Crohy Kelp House

We carried on, climbing across fences and following the cliff looking at waves smashing into the rocks below. We skirted the cliff, passing blowholes that Seamus called “widowmakers” and looking at the island of Arranmore further out to sea.

crohy cliffs donegal

You could also see where tectonic plates pushed layers of rock together when the USA and Europe and North Africa were part of the supercontinent Pangea. This part of Donegal is actually part of the International Appalachian hiking trail.

crohy cliffs donegal

We left the cliffside and climbed up a small hill to the Napoleonic tower. These were built all around the coast of Ireland after the French tried to use Ireland as a back door entrance in the late 18th century.

The towers were where the men lived who operated the 15m communication system that stood beside the tower. It was a physical system of flags, pendants and balls that could be read with a sailors codebook. It only worked when the visibility was good, which in this part of the world is not very often. Luckily for the English, Napoleon was defeated soon after and the telegraph solved the problem of long-distance messaging.

napoleonic tower crohy donegal

We went back down towards the sea and followed the cliff trail again.

donegal bath

We followed a depression in the ground that developed into a trench before it rounded a curve and dropped down into the earth through a fern-filled opening.

crohy soapstone mine donegal

These were the old soapstone mines that started in the 19th century. They worked until 1947. This particular working allowed you to go about 20m in before you met water. The bright green ferns and protection from the elements above made this feel like the entrance to the Land that Time Forgot. I expected to see a baby dinosaur hatch from an egg and scamper out into the damp Donegal air. Coming back out we could see the ruins of old stone buildings in the landscape that were part of the workings.

Back on the cliff-trail, we came to the star of this route – the sea arch named “An Bhriste” after the Irish for “trousers”. You cannot see this formation from the road and I doubt that I would have found this or the soapstone mine without the help of a good guide like Seamus.

an bhriste donegal
Seamus beside An Bhriste

On the far side of the cliff overlooking An Bhriste was the WW2 navigational aid no. 74. The purpose of these whitewashed stones set in the ground was to warn aircraft that they were flying over neutral land.

eire 74 navigational aid

This was as far as we went along the cliff-trail and we climbed up to the road that hugged the hills above. From here we walked back to the village.

crohy donegal

Along the way, we passed the old WW2 concrete lookouts used by the coast watching service. These were manned by two men on 8-hour shifts during the war. They had to record everything they saw to Irish military intelligence who in turn, passed them on to the RAF. To balance this out for neutrality purposes, any German pilots who landed in Ireland were hosted in the Curragh Army camp where they were allowed go to the cinema.

Back in Crohy, my camera died as we walked the length of the main beach which was heavy with the brackish smell of seaweed. The wind picked up as we climbed back onto the road. To our right were stone circles – rare enough in this part of Ireland. Ahead was Termon House, once owned by the clergy and now a holiday home.

Our endpoint was the impressive stone walls that lined the road ahead. They were about 10ft tall and beautifully constructed so they tapered towards the top. They were planned to give local people paid work during the 1840s famine. At the time this cost £1500. The government refused to pay for it so the local landlord paid everyone.

famine walls crohy
Crohy Famine Walls

Google Maps: 54.929146, – 8.442690

Type of walk: Coastline

Distance: 6.75 km

Time: 10 am – 1.30 pm

Views: Atlantic coastline, islands and hills.

Underfoot: 50% coastal bracken trail, 40% country road, 10% sand

Animals: Cows, seabirds.

Humans: Nobody only us loons out in that rain.

Negatives: The rain – way too powerful for my raingear. I was wet to my underpants within an hour. This was not a walk for the CEO, who is not impressed with the liquid beauty qualities of the Irish rain.

Memorable: The wind – walking up to the Famine walls we had to cross an open stretch where the wind made landfall after racing across the Atlantic. It blew us from one side of the road to the other as we headed towards the Famine Walls.

Score: 9/10

Question: Let me know if you have ever come across walls, mines or sea-stacks like these before.


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