My intention was to write an article about my recent trip to Donegal– but then I thought, what can I say about Donegal that no-one hasn’t already experienced? You don’t have to visit Donegal to know it’s still one of Ireland’s most treasured counties, not bitten by the Celtic Tiger bug.

The air is still clear, the people eternally laid-back so that leaves me with the rocky roads, the hump-backed hills and the swirling seas. And you get the picture.

As a child, I used to spend many a summer in Donegal and since then not much has changed. But what has changed are the roads that lead to this beautiful county. Having lived on the Monaghan/Tyrone border, we’d have to travel through ‘troubled’ towns like Aughnacloy and Strabane before we’d eventually hit Donegal.

Last week, having first picked up my mother, I took the exact same route and it quickly dawned on me how much the peace process has altered the landscape.

Of course, the make-over didn’t happen yesterday, but it may as well have, because for some bizarre reason it’s only now that I can survey and appreciate this promising land.

Travelling through Aughnacloy, I didn’t eye one British soldier still in the throes of puberty.

Gone were the high walls of the barracks where sometimes you’d be pulled in to have your car searched. Other times were more pleasant. Like when my mother would cross the border to do the weekly shopping, and the soldiers would throw bags of ‘Tayto’ in through our car window.
Lorries that passed over the border would, as a kind gesture or maybe a sweetener, dump a load of confectionary with the soldiers. They in turn would pass them on to any car laden with children.

But that all depended on who you were travelling with. I figured that out each time I travelled with my older brother and his friends. Those times, we got nothing more than a grilling.

Once we were permitted to cross the border, we always felt a sense of relief. Not that we were ever guilty of anything. Our grandfather was in the old IRA but our father’s neutrality to the ‘cause’ carried through the blood so, unlike other children of our generation, we didn’t get into a frenzy later on whenever we heard a rendition of ‘Men behind the wire’.

But having witnessed the burial of our father’s friend– blown up in his car for failing to pay protection money– did leave us confused.

In the late seventies, being Catholic and Irish didn’t mean guaranteed amnesty from the IRA. But when you’re a child, you don’t think too long and hard about politics. Instead, you stare at the Union-Jacked coloured kerbs and the dark balaclava-ed figures etched on graffiti walls and you know you’re on different land.

But as I passed through Aughnacloy and Strabane last week, there wasn’t a trace of territorialism. The only sign of sovereignty in those towns was a thronging ASDA store and a BT van trundling by. Admittedly, there is still the odd worn-out road sign inscribed ‘Derry’, with the word ‘London’ scrawled out– but that’s it. That’s all that’s visibly left of the troubles.
Of course, other scars will take longer to heal. But for a change it’s nice to embark on a holiday without being reminded of the terror and bitterness this land once harboured. May rocky roads only belong in Donegal.

Above: A rock and a hard place– the Fanad Head Lighthouse in Donegal.