Overview
Ballybofey has no churches and no schools inside its official boundary. Plantation-era law kept certain Catholic buildings at a set distance from Protestant settlements, so they went up across the bridge in Stranorlar instead – and the twin towns, a combined 5,406 people, still split their functions across the River Finn today. Ballybofey (Irish: Bealach Féich, ‘Fiach’s pass’) is the market side, sitting on the N15 in County Donegal with the Finn Valley, Glenfin and the Blue Stack Mountains behind it. It’s a working service town first – come for the theatre, the football and the river rather than postcard streets.
The Balor Arts Centre
Founded in 1982 and rehoused in a purpose-built Main Street venue in 2008, the Balor is a 300-seat arts and theatre complex run by the Butt Drama Circle alongside a sister community-arts company working across the Finn Valley. The programme mixes local productions – Brian Friel’s Lovers has featured – with touring comedy, music nights like The Ghostlight Sessions, tribute acts and a family pantomime in season. It’s cheap: a typical show runs about €12, with concessions around €10. Level entry, designated seating and a hearing loop make it easy to get into, and there are two car parks within feet of the door, one at the front for the audience and one at the rear by the stage. The box office runs Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm, and reopens on performance evenings until half an hour after curtain-up; at weekends it opens only when there’s a show, two hours before. Booking is online around the clock, which is the way to do it – the pantomime and the bigger touring nights sell out weeks ahead.
Sport
For a town this size, the sporting infrastructure is out of proportion. Finn Park is home to Finn Harps, a fixture in the League of Ireland. Seán MacCumhaill Park across town is the county ground and main training base for the Donegal senior footballers – on big championship days, forget Main Street and use the supervised parking at Ballybofey & Stranorlar Mart, which opens from noon at €5 a car and is under five minutes’ walk from the ground. The Ballybofey & Stranorlar Golf Club plays an 18-hole parkland course laid out by P.C. Carr in 1957 – par 68, 5,237 m. And McElhinney’s, the long-standing department store, will sell you fishing tackle and homeware under the same roof.
The river and the walks
The River Finn is the town’s best asset. It holds salmon and trout, fished on a catch-and-release basis, with permits through the Glenmore Estate office or the local anglers’ association; the banks are accessible at several points near town. The estate’s grounds stretch along the river and into the hills, though its Georgian lodge was demolished in the 1990s.
Non-anglers get the River Finn Walk, a flat, signposted path from the town bridge along the water, and the roughly 5 km Twin Towns Trail linking Ballybofey and Stranorlar past remnants of the old railway. Across the water at Stranorlar, Drumboe Woods is riverside woodland worth an hour – rabbits and badgers, and three protected bat species after dark. A traffic-free greenway from the twin towns through the Barnesmore Gap to Donegal Town is proposed, but it’s still at public-consultation stage – don’t plan a trip around it yet.
Around the town
Isaac Butt, the lawyer who founded the Home Rule League, was born just outside town at Glenfin, and a memorial hall in Stranorlar carries his name. Within an easy drive: Balor’s Fort above the Finn, linked to the mythic Fomorian king; the Beltany Stone Circle, a well-preserved Bronze Age ring with solstice-aligned stones a short drive to the north-east; Barnesmore Gap itself, the mountain pass on the Donegal Town road with short, rewarding walks; and Lough Eske under the Blue Stacks for fishing and kayaking.
Getting there
The N15 runs straight through – about 35 minutes from Letterkenny and 50 from Derry, which also has the nearest railway station, with onward buses to the Finn Valley. Bus Éireann routes 64 and 480 stop in the centre, along with TFI Local Link services 264, 288 and 290. Street parking on Main Street is limited; the town car park off the N15 is the fallback.