Things to Do in County Donegal

More about County Donegal

Where to base yourself

Donegal is the fourth-largest county in Ireland and the roads through it are slow, so pick a base close to the part you actually came for rather than trying to run the whole county from one bed. Donegal Town covers the south: small, walkable, with the castle and the abbey ruins in it, and about an hour from the Slieve League road. Letterkenny is the biggest town and the best-served for shops, restaurants and late arrivals, and it sits at the junction for Glenveagh, Inishowen and the Derry road — a working town rather than a scenic one, which is fine if you plan to be out all day. Dunfanaghy is the north-west choice, a single square of hotels, guesthouses and cafés with Horn Head, Sheephaven Bay and half a dozen beaches inside fifteen minutes. Buncrana is the sensible base for Inishowen, and Bundoran at the Leitrim end suits surfers and families who want a promenade and an amusement arcade. If you want the Gaeltacht, Dungloe and the villages around Gweedore have B&Bs and pubs but far fewer beds.

Summer is genuinely tight. Dunfanaghy, Bundoran and anywhere near Glenveagh fill for July and August, the Mary from Dungloe festival takes most of The Rosses in late July, and the Rally Ireland weekend swallows Letterkenny. Book by spring for those dates; outside them you can usually turn up.

The cliff coast

Slieve League has two car parks — a lower one near the visitor centre at Teelin and a small upper one at the gate, which fills early and involves a narrow climb. The classic view is from the platform at Bunglass Point, and it is a five-minute walk from the car, not a hike. One Man’s Pass, the narrow ridge that continues along the top, is exposed on both sides and should be left alone in wind or low cloud.

North of that the coast keeps going. Horn Head has a one-way loop road out of Dunfanaghy with parking at the top and a short walk to the cliff edge. The Fanad Peninsula is the drive that ends at the lighthouse, and the descent past the Knockalla road to Ballymastocker Bay is the best twenty minutes of driving in the county. Right at the top, Malin Head is the northernmost point of the mainland: a tower, an EIRE 80 sign laid out in white stones during the war, and on clear winter nights one of the better places in Ireland to see the aurora. It sits on the Inishowen 100, a signposted loop that takes a full day if you stop.

Glenveagh, Errigal and the walking

Glenveagh National Park is the one place in Donegal that behaves like a managed attraction. The visitor centre has the car park and the café; the castle is about 3.7 km up the lakeshore, with a shuttle bus in season or a flat, easy walk if you’d rather. The castle interior and the gardens are on guided tours and ticketed separately from the park itself. Golden eagles were reintroduced here from 2001 and are occasionally seen over the glen.

Errigal, the quartzite cone you can see from most of north-west Donegal, is a steep out-and-back on loose scree and takes most people two and a half to three hours return from the R251 lay-by. The Poisoned Glen below it is boggy but flat and gives you the mountain from underneath for a fraction of the effort. Serious hillwalkers go for the Seven Sisters traverse, which is a long day and needs a map and settled weather. At the other end of the scale, Glenevin Waterfall near Clonmany is a graded riverside path of about twenty minutes each way and works with children.

The Gaeltacht and the islands

Gweedore and the coast around it is the strongest Irish-speaking area in the country, and you will hear it in shops and pubs rather than as a performance. Leo’s Tavern at Meenaleck, run by the family that produced Clannad and Enya, does music most summer nights. Tory Island, nine miles offshore, is the outlier: a ferry from Magheraroarty of roughly three quarters of an hour, its own dialect, its own painting school and an elected king. The crossing is weather-dependent and cancellations are normal, so do not plan a day trip you cannot abandon.

Beaches, and when to come

The strands are the county’s quiet advantage — long, clean and usually near-empty. Maghera Beach near Ardara has caves you can walk into at low tide and absolutely should not be inside on a rising one; check the tables before you go. Rossnowlagh is wide, hard-packed and you can drive onto it, which makes it the easiest with small children. Bundoran’s reef break is for experienced surfers only, but both towns have schools running lessons in summer.

May, June and September are the best months: the light is long, the ferries and shuttles are running, and you are not queueing. Winter is for the aurora, storms and a lot of closed doors. Fuel stations thin out badly in the north-west, so fill up in the towns.