Upcoming vacation in Ireland

[photodad]

April 2, 2019 at 7:23 pm

Hi,

I’m an amateur photographer from Germany and I’ll be spending a two-week vacation in County Donegal with my family and some friends of ours in May. We’ll be based near Kilcar about 40 km west of Donegal Town. I was wondering if anyone could recommend any particularly nice photo locations in the area.

Since it’s going to be a family vacation and I have three small kids I’ll probably be pressed for time regarding photography. I’m lucky to be married to a very understanding lady who tolerates a lot when it comes to her husband storming off at random intervals to go shoot some photos but there’s really only so much I can get away with. Based on my experience from prior vacations I’ll most likely be limited to

a) anything I can shoot in passing while on trips with the family during the daytime

b) the occasional solitary photo trip in the evening after I put my kids to bed

c) getting up before dawn to catch the sunrise (if I’m feeling really, really motivated)

Option b) and c) means I’ll need to stick to locations as close as possible to our holiday cottage (max 30 minutes drive) to make the most use of the golden/blue hour. I’ll be looking at the usual travel photography subjects – landscapes/seascapes, historic monuments, evocative ruins, remote beaches etc.pp.

Any suggestions for awesome photo opportunities?

Here are some places we’re planning to visit (time and weather permitting):

Donegal Castle
Slieve League
Silver Strand
Lough Doon
Glencolmcille
Maghera Beach & Caves
Glengesh Pass
Kilclooney Dolmen

I’m really enjoying medieval and prehistoric sites and outdoorsy stuff so that’s the kind of thing I’ll be looking for. Our kids will do hiking trips up to 5 km (occasionally more when properly motivated) and we found that a judicious dose of treasure hunts and picnics tends to keep them happy pretty much wherever we take them :-)

For day trips we’ll have to limit ourselves to a radius of a one-hour drive as our friend’s daughter tends to get carsick on longer road trips. So while we’d love to explore the northern part of the county as well we’ll have to save that for a later visit (which I’m sure is in the cards – the photos I’ve seen so far on Flickr etc. are stunning).

So… what other places would be worth visiting? Any local advice would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards

Harald