The low clouds obscured the nearby mountains as I walked the 16th hole of the Old Links at Ballyliffin Golf Club one day this past July. But the gloom of an impending squall was doing nothing to dull the raw enthusiasm of my playing partner, Roe McCrossan, an Oxford, England, resident who is a member of this extraordinary, 36-hole, seaside facility on the Inishowen Peninsula in Ireland’s County Donegal.
Pointing beyond the beach that runs adjacent to Ballyliffin’s rugged dune-scape and toward the hills, McCrossan explained that when the sun shines, the slopes alight with various shades of grays and purples.
“It’s like a kaleidoscope,” he said. “When I die, my ashes are going to get buried in that beach. That’s how much I love this place.”
In particular, McCrossan was referring to Ballyliffin, whose newer course, called the Glashedy Links, is the most renowned of County Donegal’s 17 golf courses. But as I learned over a short three days golfing and exploring in Donegal, he just as easily could have been referring to the entire county.
Situated on the northwest corner of Ireland, Donegal is often overlooked by tourists and even by the Irish. Portions of it, though, aren’t actually that remote. For example, the Inishowen Peninsula, where Ballyliffin is located, sits practically in the shadow of Londonderry, the second largest city in Northern Ireland. But Donegal is in the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland largely separates it from Ireland’s 25 other counties.
I started my Donegal visit, which was partially sponsored by Tourism Ireland, in the town of Ballyliffin. My lodge on the first night, the 35-room Strand Hotel, overlooked the Pollan Bay and the golf courses and offered views across the water to Malin Head, which is the northernmost point of Ireland. Like the Ballyliffin Hotel that I stayed at the following night, the Strand is a family-run lodge that offers affordable and quality Irish fare. It also has a lively lobby area that serves as a parlor room, where families spent the evening socializing, eating, drinking and playing games.
Mainly, though, I just couldn’t wait to hit the golf course the following morning. Ballyliffin’s Glashedy Links hosted the Irish Open in 2018. But despite its growing notoriety, it’s still a bit off the worn path of destination golfers in Ireland, which more prominently features facilities such as Ballybunion and Lahinch on Ireland’s southwest coast and Royal County Down on the east coast of Northern Ireland.
The 132-room Rathmullan House dates to the 1760s. Photo Credit: TW photo by Robert Silk
I found Glashedy to be extraordinary. Virtually every hole is framed by the stalwart sand dunes that one so readily associates with seaside golf in the U.K. and Ireland. And each hole is a stern test, free of the quirks that are common on links golf courses. Still, I liked the Old Links even better. It isn’t quite as difficult, but it sits on the coastal side of the Ballyliffin property, with four holes along the beach. And unlike Glashedy, which has modern, smoothed-out fairways, the Old Links’ fairways are filled with dips and humps.
I started my second full day in Donegal by making the shortish drive around the Trawbreaga Bay to Malin Head. There, I hiked for a few miles along the point, which offers views out to the North Atlantic, west across the bay and southwest toward the beach and the 100-foot sand dunes of nearby Five Fingers Strand. I, however, directed most of my attention to the craggy cliffs and rocks directly below me, where the tidal pools ebbed and flowed endlessly.
Later that day, I ventured by ferry with my traveling companion from Buncrana, on the southwest of Inishowen, across the Lough Swilly waterway to the seaside village of Rathmullan. Our hotel, Rathmullan House, was a four-star affair of 34 rooms that’s on the edge of a stand of trees with walking-path access to the beach below. Once the country residence of the family that founded what is now the Northern and National Irish Bank, its original house was built in the 1760s, before being enlarged and renovated a century later. The hotel retains an Old World charm. Its large lawns, numerous sitting rooms and two restaurants were a clear draw to the largely Irish clientele.
Rooms at Rathmullan House, a hotel in a seaside village on Lough Swilly, have a Victorian feel. Photo Credit: TW photo by Robert Silk
My final day in County Donegal began with a 25-minute drive north from Rathmullan to tiny Portsalon. It was a stunning day, the first clear one I had experienced on the trip. And as we neared our destination, the views down to Lough Swilly from the deep-green seaside hills were distracting enough to be dangerous.
The Portsalon Golf Club is one of 14 seaside links in Donegal, and it embodies much of what I’ve come to love about golf in both Ireland and Scotland. The playing ground runs along a narrow strip of turf directly adjacent to Lough Swilly. Indeed, there are few spots on the course from which the water is not visible. It also offers some exciting shots, not least of which is the tee shot on the par-4 second hole, which requires carrying a section of the beach as well as a narrow tidal channel.
But a big part of Portsalon’s charm is its atmosphere. Like many other Irish courses, it’s truly part of the surrounding village. A pathway to the beach even runs across and under the links. Also, the friendliness that is a characterizing feature of Ireland was much on display here. So much so, in fact, that after the round, I sat in the clubhouse for hours with my three Irish and Northern Irish playing partners, tilted pints of Guinness and wished that this day in Donegal could go on a long while longer.
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Correction: Rathmullen House has 34 guestrooms.