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Inishowen Peninsula, County Donegal

Helen Mark travels to the Inishowen Peninsula, County Donegal which is a microcosm of traditional Ireland - its landscape, its people and its way of life.


Helen Mark meets Liz and Ralph Sheppard, keen ornithologists who are in search of the elusive chough at Malin Head and learns why the Barnacle goose becomes a fish on Fridays.

The Inishowen car ferry is now a far cry from its 1950s predecessor. Helen chats to Jack McLaughlin, who used to operate the vessel and remembers the days when the ferry used to make its way across the waters with a very different kind of cargo. In the 1940s the ferry was often used to smuggle tobacco, sugar – and even wallpaper - to rationed Northern Ireland.

Helen visits the Inishowen Lighthouse, one of the beacons of the peninsula. The current lighthouse attendant Neil Smith and ex-lighthouse keeper Eugene O’Sullivan talk about the old days of oil lamps and the care of wicks and the modern light, which is fully automated.

In an area so dominated by the marine environment, there could be no better place for the National Fishing Training College. Young fisherman come here to learn their trade and can take courses in anything from deckhand to skipper. Helen talks to Captain James Heggarty on the deck of a ship going nowhere, and then meets students taking an exam in repairing trawer nets.

Very few forms of music are tied so closely to a people and a culture than the traditional fiddle playing of Donegal. Roisin Harrigan explains the intricacies of this unique style and John McGrory and Mick Deniffe join in to play us out, Donegal-style.

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