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Few would disagree with the assertion that County Donegal has the richest scenery in the whole of Ireland. Second only in size to County Cork, it has a spectacular two-hundred-mile coastline - an intoxicating run of headlands, promontories and peninsulas - rising to the highest sea-cliffs in Europe at Slieve League. Inland is a terrain of glens, rivers and bogland hills, of which the best-known parts are the Glencolmcille Peninsula and around Ardara and Glenties in the southern part of the county. The Glencolmcille area attracts more visitors than any other, yet the landscape of northern Donegal is, if anything, even more satisfying, especially the Rosguill and Inishowen peninsulas and the interior region - sometimes called the Donegal Highlands - around Errigal Mountain, Lough Beagh and Lough Gartan. Other noteworthy areas are the Rosses and the Bloody Foreland, which are reminiscent of the more barren stretches of Connemara and make up the strongest Gaeltacht , or Irish-speaking districts, in the county. Donegal's original name was Tir Chonaill , which translates as "the land of Conal", who was one of the twelve sons of Niall of the Nine Hostages. After the Flight of the Earls in the early seventeenth century, the English changed the name to that of their main garrison Dun na nGall ("the fort of the foreigner") which has a certain irony, because Donegal always eluded the grip of English power, mainly owing to its wild and untillable terrain. Donegal is the most northerly part of Ireland which confuses some into believing that it is part of Northern Ireland. That it is not was due to the Unionists' belief at the time of Partition in 1922 that Donegal's Catholic population would have threatened the stability of the new statelet by voting the county and the whole of the North back into the Republic at a later stage.
Your Tip for County Donegal
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