DONEGAL TO DERRY

We leave lovely Donegal town this morning and continue on the North West Trail

The sun was not smiling this morning but there was no rain and we had a following wind. This is good for everything except photos. Most of the guests we spoke to at our hotel were French but Dagmar told me that some Germans were there as well. We say "Au Revoir" to Donegal and the cycle route took us on a rolly polly wibbly wobbly route for the first few miles. Then it settled down into more picturesque scenery with less hills.

We found ourselves in a Donegal rain forest and came out beside Lough Eske.

The Blue Stack Mountains on our left started to disappear. Not one, but two cuckoos called. We now had no choice but to join the N15 Highway but it had a wide hard shoulder for cyclists and tractors. Here we encountered a disappointment. There was rubbish everywhere. Why do people throw rubbish out of their windows? Ireland is not a third world country and where were the council workers who should be cleaning it up? The cycle route left the N15 and we picked up views of loughs and distant forests

We had a roadside break and the only sounds we heard were trickling water and birds. We continued to follow the North West Trail to Strabane leaving it briefly for a meal stop. The image below is at the entry into Strabane

We were now in Northern Ireland, except we were not because having cycled just a few miles we were back in the Republic. We were on NCN92 which criss crossed the border and the image below looked out over the county of Strabane

NCN92 gently dropped down from the hills onto a purpose built cycle beside the River Foyle that took us into the centre of Londonderry. The image is the recently built Peace Bridge

Today we cycled 55 miles mostly on the North West Trail and NCN92