To the Lighthouse Café

To the Lighthouse Café

1 September 2025, Monday

I woke up in a big soft bed with an iron frame that in places had patches of rust bleeding through its roughly applied white paint.  After a few minutes spent assessing the situation I discovered that the bed was difficult to get out of, not because of any sort of physical problem with the bed itself but because of physical problems with my own aging frame on the morning after completing a momentous journey across the whole of Europe from east to west. I felt a bit like your man Gulliver who the little people had tied down by the arms and legs using thousands of tiny ropes and strings in Jonathan Swift’s novel. The structure to which I was attached had certainly not been acquired from a DFS Bank Holiday Sale as it looked old enough to have been the Sickbed of Cúchulainn that the Pogues once popularised in song. How many others had woken in it before me, and how many had failed to wake, bringing about the need for a wake? I imagined centuries of linen nightgowns, pennies placed on eyes closed by visiting priests, the rustle of busy rosary beads and the pouring of small glasses of poitín to keep the devil away. A big hole in one of the legs of the bed suggested there may have been some involvement with a bullet at some point in time. Or perhaps it was caused by metalworm, the tough no-nonsense relative of the woodworm.

The antique construction was extremely comfortable, almost filling a white-walled bedroom in a thatched cottage at the top end of Donegal’s Fanad Peninsula (Irish: Cionn Fhánada, meaning ‘the headland of sloping ground’). Had the ground really been sloping then rising from the bed wouldn’t have been so much of a challenge. Although I had dreamt in a unique combination of English and Bulgarian spoken in a Yorkshire accent, I had woken in a district of the Gaeltacht where the first language was Irish. Maidin mhaith (good morning), I said to Priyatelkata, using up 10% of my Irish vocabulary in one go.

Naturally, it being the first proper day of the trip, exploration and discovery were at the top of our agenda. We went in search of fresh scones because they don’t have such things in the cafés and pâtisseries of our homeland and we’d developed a bit of an addiction problem. However, we found little else but four kilometres of deserted beach washed by the great roaring Atlantic surf and bounded by a broad stretch of dunes at Ballyhiernan Bay (Irish: Bá Bhaile Uí Thiarnáin, meaning ‘gorgeous white sand with lots of Ringed Plovers running about but not a whiff of a scone’) with periods of sunshine and scattered showers. Heavier rain rising in sea areas Rockall and Malin pushed us on to take refuge at Fanad Head Lighthouse where there was a café serving homemade vegetable soup and freshly baked wheaten bread which we grudgingly devoured like we’d never seen food before. It’s incredible how rain rattling on a windowpane always heightens the heartiness of a good hearty broth.

The bread was gone in the twinkle of the eye so I used the sleeve of my jumper to mop up the final dregs of soup from the bottom of the bowl. As I did this, an old man wearing a Free Palestine tee shirt looked across at us from a neighbouring table and spoke in Irish. Being in a non-English speaking part of the world it seemed rude to answer him in English so we told him in Bulgarian that we didn’t understand what he was saying. This was our natural reaction as it was something that happened to us on a daily basis at home in Veliko Tarnovo. With all three of us having soon decided it would be far easier to compromise and proceed in English, he went on to tell us that the lighthouse was well worth a visit and that every day for the past week, dolphins had been seen playing in the sea lough nearby.

After sharing thank yous and goodbyes with the man in an array of languages that none of us were completely sure about, we walked the three or four hundred metres up the road to the lighthouse and parted with a fair few euro for a ticket entitling us to be shown round the place as well as up and down it. A young woman who went by the gorgeous Irish name of Bláthnaid started speaking to us in her native Irish tongue and then fell about laughing because she could see that we hadn’t a clue what she was on about. If she’d said good morning to us in her language it would have been a less confusing matter even though we were well into the afternoon.

She explained how in the old days, mercury was used to provide a low-friction surface for rotating the huge lenses that magnified the light, making them easier to turn. Mercury vapour, in conjunction with living an isolated life out on a rock on the edge of the middle of nowhere would often cause insanity for the lighthouse keepers and their families. But they’d all been automated since the 1980s and were operated from a remote site. I imagined a call centre in Bangladesh.

She also told us the story of a British naval vessel called the Laurentic that in 1917 struck two mines laid by a German submarine and sank within an hour. 354 men were lost in the disaster and bodies washed up on shore for weeks afterwards. Many had frozen to death in their lifeboats as they tried to reach land. Over the course of the next seven years Royal Navy divers went down to the seabed to recover most of the 3,211 gold ingots that had been on board. However, 22 bars were never found. Bláthnaid said that if we were to go for a swim and find one we’d be expected to tell the British Government because the gold was their property, but really it would be best if we told her and gave her half of the money because it was her that had put us on to it. But we didn’t go deep sea diving because it was raining.

At the top of the lighthouse Bláthnaid showed us a small LED light no bigger than a standard Lego brick which, although unimpressive close up, when magnified was far more effective than any of the previous methods for telling sailors to stay away. Bláthnaid said she had her own method for telling sailors to stay away. From that lofty point, had it not been for the sideways rain, there would have been magnificent views of Lough Swilly and Malin Head beyond.

I suspected that it was the rain that put the dolphins off the job of coming out to amuse the tourists. We sat in the concrete wildlife observation post for half an hour with an illustrated list in front of us depicting what we could expect to see, but only one single solitary cormorant came out to observe us. Thankfully the vegetable soup, Bláthnaid’s entertaining tour, and the rugged coastal scenery had all been very nice and made the visit an enjoyable one.

In the Pier Bar in Portsalon I had a couple of lush pints of Guinness (my first for almost two years) and Priyatelkata had a couple of pots of tea. We sat by a window so that we could look out for dolphins and seabirds but saw only sparrows pecking at almost empty crisp packets… Tayto, of course! In the distance we could see Ballymastocker Strand, the second best beach in the world. Bláthnaid had told us that it was actually the first best beach in the world but if local people went around making such a bold statement in public then visitors would start to argue that there was another one somewhere else that was better. Going straight in with the claim of it being second best averted potential disagreements and saved a lot of time.

2 September 2025, Tuesday

In the musty rustic cottage, using traditional Irish components bought at Tesco in Letterkenny, we prepared and ate our own five-star grade of Irish breakfast which comprised of soda bread, butter, jam and strong tea. It was all delicious but some of the joy was sucked out of the occasion when I realised that it wasn’t my clumsiness that was causing the runny mess all over the table but a leak in the base of the teapot. In some ways this was good because I always feel like a bit of a creep when I can’t think of anything to complain about at the point of writing a review on the Airbnb website at the end of a trip.

The Great Pollet Arch is Ireland’s largest sea arch and one of the star features of the Wild Atlantic Way. It stood in the wild Atlantic at a point only three kilometres from our musty rustic cottage. This spectacular rock formation was formed under the constant influence of the Atlantic Ocean which batters it every day, even on Donegal’s soft days, and with no regard for the half-day closing arrangements that were in force locally on Wednesdays, so we understood there was no guarantee that it would remain there for all eternity. With this in mind we wrapped ourselves up in our weatherproof clothing to protect us from the wind and rain, and to hide the tea stains on the front of our jumpers, and set off with a degree of urgency to have a look at it. It was impressive and gorgeous and we were completely alone there apart from a few cows that did a bit of mooing and pooing but gave no indication of being battered daily by the Atlantic (battered cows were more of a Scottish delicacy). Embracing the peaceful nature of our bovine friends, we took the time to thank them for their part in the production of the butter that had made our breakfast time such a wonderful event. They could in no way be blamed for the teapot debacle.

Milford was the nearest settlement to us to have anything that might be described as a population, that being 1,076 recorded at the most recent census. However, the figure couldn’t be completely relied upon as old Kathleen who lived by the Garda Station was struggling to get by despite the twice-daily poultices and the generous helpings of Jameson’s in her tea. The town had historically been called Ballynagalloglagh (Irish: Baile na nGallóglach, meaning ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper’) but the name was changed when a big flour mill was built there near the ford in the river. From its founding in the eighteenth century the mill formed the heart of the town’s economy until it closed in 1992 and the building in its most recent guise has stood completely derelict ever since. Such an ugly concrete monstrosity on the shore of the beautiful Mulroy Bay needed to have something done to it, either by means of tarting it up or knocking it down, and apparently both options had been discussed at length without a decision being made. In most places in the world it would have had a few weeds or maybe even a feral buddleia bush to give its appearance a glimmer of life, but as Milford was so close to the Atlantic and the warming influence of the Gulf Stream, there was a wild palm tree growing happily on its roof. 

The town centre with some nice old buildings no longer in use, particularly hotels and public houses, looked like it had seen much better times in the past and that poor Kathleen, when her day eventually came, wouldn’t be the first to have departed. It saddened us to see the place in such a sorry state and then it saddened us further when we saw that the out-of-town retail park, that had probably been a contributing factor in the old town’s decline, was also desperately short of people taking an interest. We found a branch of Lidl there and a huge shop that sold absolutely everything imaginable that could be made in China changing hands for less than a euro per item. Near to the big outlets was a row of smaller shop units that accommodated a barbershop, a pet food supplier, a Presbyterian church, a nail bar and a pizza takeaway.

We spotted a lovely old teapot in a second hand shop on the quayside in the little town of Ramelton (Irish: Ráth Mealtain, meaning ‘Fort of Mealtan and home of the Ó Donnells’) which was also lovely and old. They were only asking €8 for it but it was a bit on the large side. So we went away to discuss it over a pint of Guinness and a safe pot of tea in the Pier Bar in Portsalon. The fine porcelain receptacle’s sturdy construction and beauty would have assured accident free tea and periods of silent admiration back at the musty rustic cottage but its incredible volume might have led folks to believe that we drank too much.

Having decided not to go back to Ramelton for the teapot we used up the remainder of our drinking time learning to say thank you in Irish. It’s written as go raibh maith agat but it’s pronounced as guh-ruh mah a-gut, and whenever we said it we made the locals smile in the same way that Bulgarians smile at our attempts at their language when we’re at home. 

Image:

Fanad Head Lighthouse. No dolphins were harmed in the taking of this photograph.

Photographs:

The Donegal Dally

Part Three:

It’s on its way.