This region is full of diverse wildlife habitats. Coastal Ireland has vegetated sea cliffs, grasslands (which were once ancient beaches for ancient tourists) and boasts a variety of rare species of plants, animals, and birds. But the freshwater lakes are a unique feature to this region. They generally have enough nutrients for plants, but not enough for algae. So the plants, like special ferns, don’t have competition. Somehow this ties into being an enticement for water fowl. There are ducks and sanderlings across the peninsula, as well as endangered falcons and Chough (think of crows) and plenty of other critters.
Sitting in the middle of this is Island Roy, or “the isle.” You can just see it in the background, below. Previously, this place was filled with farming, fishing, seaweed and shellfish gathering. If you were on the mainland and needed to get on to the isle, or vice versa, you crossed on stilts.
On a map it looks like a crude U, or a hand frozen in an arthritic position, with fingers going this way and that. It sits in the back of a shallow bay. The first causeways connected the island to the mainland in 1927. Finally, in 2001, the local community could officially call themselves an island. And, during high tide or particularly bad storms, it very much is one.
Here you can see the Harry Blaney Bridge, which is County Donegal’s longest span. Blaney was descendent of an IRA commander, and himself a local politician and farmer. At one time it was alleged he might have been an arms dealer during the Troubles. He denied it and the claims apparently never went anywhere. Over the years he and his brother built up a successful political machine. An Irish nationalist who resisted partition or compromising Irish sovereignty, his bio reads like he was the sort of socially conservative, rural populist man beloved by the locals who knew him, and devil have the rest. Now he has this bridge in his name. I wonder how many times he was on it between when they opened the bridge and closed his casket, four years later. He’s buried three miles away, but you have to take an indirect route, the sort so typical in watery regions, to get there.
The bridge with his name, though, turned what used to be a half-hour trip into a five minutes drive. Can you think of a better rural memorial than that?
Lovely as these roads are, anything that gives you back that chunk of time on routine trips is, you would assume, a welcome change. Of course some of the folks didn’t think the bridge was necessary.
