Bundoran is a bustling, thriving place, but of the tourist order _pur sang_, with golf-links, electric lights, and up-to-date hotels, and, for that reason, if for no other, is a place for the genuine lover of the road to avoid.
Donegal itself is an improvement. It is a small but attractively placed town at the head of its own bay, and, in spite of its being a coast town, it is more allied with agricultural interests than with trade by sea.
The guide-books tell one little of Donegal, and so much the better. One enjoys finding out things for oneself, and so one has practically a virgin field at Donegal unless he will delve deep into frowsy historical works, such as the "Annals" of the "Four Masters" of the old Abbey of Donegal. The retreat where they patched and pieced together this ancient record is no more, but it stood, "proud, grand, and rich" upon the site still marked by some ruinous heaps of stones.
Donegal has the usual accompaniment of a castle, but, in this case, it is a sixteenth-century descendant of a former stronghold. It is a fine Jacobean building, built up out of the remnants of its parent, and, with its tall gabled towers and turrets, is in every way a satisfactory example of a mediæval baronial residence, though differing in many essentials from those common throughout Ireland.
Killybegs, between Donegal and Slieve League, on the north shore of the bay, is one of those picturesque coast villages on a landlocked tiny bay, of which so many examples exist in the British Islands. It is no more attractive, nor any less so, than others, but it has this distinction--a lengthy sojourn there will demonstrate beyond all doubt that one
can live far away from a great city and yet never miss its whilom attractions.
With many other places similarly situated, a run "up to town" is inevitable and necessary; here, one is apparently as completely isolated from the distractions of the great world outside as if he were marooned on a desert isle, with the advantage, however, of being able to get away at once by means of what, to all appearances, is a toy railway running to Donegal.
Carrick is another village a little further on and similarly isolated,--more so, if anything, in that the diminutive engine and its toy carriages stop, in its not rapid course, at Killybegs, and one journeys onward by "car."