My fantastic, and terrible, trip to Donegal Tweed

I usually blog in Swedish but this post will be in English since I want to share it with the fantastic people I met on my trip to Donegal. The trip was a quest to see, and learn, about Donegal Tweed, a fabric I have loved ever since I became a tweediot ten years ago.

I´ve struggled with depression and GAD (General Anxiety Disorder) for almost 20 years (I am retired on medical grounds) and that made the trip a true challenge for me. A few years ago this trip would have been unthinkable but I´ve made great progress the last few years. This wasn´t my first trip to Ireland, I´ve been visiting since 1988 but I´ve seldom travelled north of Connemara (most of the time I´ve spent in Co. Cork – Up the Rebels!) and I´ve never been to Donegal before.

My plan for the trip was to fly to Dublin (Friday 19^th of September) and catch a bus at the airport to Donegal Town and spend three nights there while visiting Magee1866 and Hanna Hats of Donegal in the town and Studio Donegal in Kilcar. I would then travel to Ardara and spend one night there, visiting Triona and Molloy & Sons, before going back to Dublin.

In Dublin the plan was to meet up with my two friends V and Doyle at their local pub The Hut (one of very few remaining Victorian pubs in Dublin). After a few pints I would then go to the airport and spend the night there before catching an early flight back home. An ambitious plan that would prove to be too ambitious for me.

Getting to Dublin was easy going but getting on the bus to Donegal was a bit of a struggle since more passengers than the bus had seats wanted to get on. I had pre-booked a seat so eventually I got on. The traffic in Dublin was terrible and when we reached the half way point, Cavan, we were 90 minutes late, The driver drove like a man possessed trying to make up time but we were still very late when we arrived in Donegal Town that evening.

Despite my negative sense of direction, I managed to find the B&B I had booked. When I knocked on the door no one opened. I banged on the door and no one opened. I walked around the house and knocked on the windows but no one came to the door. I rang the B&B several times but only got their answering machine. After waiting at the B&B for over an hour I gave up and realized I had to find somewhere else to sleep that night. This was 20.30 a Friday so finding something that I could afford was a bit of a struggle but I finally found a room at The Central hotel. The were fully booked the following nights so I would have to find something else for the rest of the weekend.

After looking for accommodation in Donegal Town and not finding anything I could afford I decided to alter my plans and make Ardara my base since the B&B, Bayview, I already was booked into had a room available for the extra nights.

On the Saturday I walked in Donegal Town and the surroundings. I visited the Magee1866 store and the SVP charity shop (Society of St. Vincent de Paul). At both places the staff was very friendly and I chatted with them. I think the thing in the water is a salmon. The Magee store had A LOT of fantastic stuff but it was too dear for me since I buy most of my clothes at the local charity shops in Halmstad, Sweden. All my outfits in this post are thrifted – the hat and the caps being the exception, they were bought new from Hanna Hats and Studio Donegal. That said, on the second floor of the Magee store there is a big room with garments that are on sale and there I almost bought a tweed vest. And Magee1866 – get some tweed ties!!!!!! I would have bought a bunch but you had NONE!

At the SVP shop they had a Magee blazer that I would have bought if it only had been my size. I did buy a pair of Edwin jeans in Japanese selvedge denim there. They weren´t in my size but I bought them for my friend V that I was supposed to meet in Dublin a few days later. The Edwin´s were a steal, only five euros.

During the day I also managed to get in contact with the owner of the B&B from the night before and he had suddenly taken ill and ended up at the emergency room at the local hospital. That explained why he wasn´t around the help me check in.

I caught the bus from Donegal Town to Ardara (stunning views along the way, and from my B&B) and walked from the town centre to my B&B that was located a mile or so away. During that short walk I experienced Irish weather, i.e. both sunshine and rain. The Bayview B&B is run by a very lovely lady. It´s an old school B&B where you can sit in the living room and watch the tellie with the proprietor in the evening. The sort of place that were very common when I first started visiting Ireland back in 1988 but are now very scarce. The Bayview also obliged when I needed a lift to the bus or to appointments near Ardara. If you are visiting Ardara and chose not to stay at the Bayview you are making a mistake!

Staying at the Bayview I took walks in the morning to enjoy the fantastic landscape that surrounds Ardara. The first pic below was the view I had from my room.

My Sunday in Ardara was spent visiting Triona and walking in the scenic roads that surround the town. At Triona I saw a lot of nice tweed clothes and a young man named Oisin showed me his weaving skills.

The most interesting place with Triona (from my point of view) was the basement, which is not open to the public so I didnt get to see it, I was told most of the work went on down there (weaving, finishing the tweed and sewing the garments). Triona had some lovely stuff but it also felt like they were set up like a conveyor belt to cater for the busloads of Yankee tourist that visit Donegal. Several of the places I visited have a lot of tourists visiting but it felt like Triona had mastered the art of catering to the many Americans with Irish ancestry that visit Donegal. They nevertheless make some great looking garments.

The total opposite to Triona was Eddie Doherty, a weaver I also visited in Ardara. Eddie has been weaving for almost 70 years, he also caters to a lot of US tourists, but his shop gave of a very different vibe than Triona. Lovely tweeds, fantastic garments and a great man!

While staying in Ardara I was told that the man who wove the cloth that makes up my Magee1866 tweed blazer (thrifted in Halmstad for 20 euros) lived in the town until he passed away this summer. His website is still up if you want to know more about him. I would have loved to meet the man! Click Here to go to his website

On Monday the 22^nd of September I took the bus to Donegal Town to visit Hanna hats of Donegal. They don´t do public tours on Mondays but when I contacted them in May I was told I was welcome at 10.30 the 22^nd and to pay for the tour on arrival so I was expecting to be tagging along on a tour arranged for a busload of tourists (which was fine by me, anything that gets me in to Hanna Hats is fine by me). Boy was I wrong – I got the VIP-treatment there. When I walked into the shop and introduced myself I was told to wait and a few minutes later Eleonor Hanna showed up (she is one of the two siblings owning the business). I got the VIP-treatment, a one-one-one tour of the premises with the CEO! To be honest, I nearly shat myself when she showed up and I realized she was doing the tour just with me!

Hanna Hats has a no filming policy where the hats are made (I assume to protect the workers from being filmed if they don´t want to) so I don´t have any footage showing the caps or hats being made but it´s available on YouTube from Hanna Hats themselves, see below. The hat I´m wearing standing nest to Eleonor is one of theirs (slightly altered to my requests), I bought it last year. I left Hanna Hats with two new caps. The first one in the style of the hats that Hanna Hats provided to the TV-series Boardwalk Empire.

After visiting Hanna Hats I took a bus to Kilcar to visit Studio Donegal (more stunning views along the way). Studio Donegal was another great visit, I think I spoke to most of the staff and they were all very friendly and knowledgeable. At Studio Donegal they even let you walk into the room where the seamstresses are working and I really enjoyed doing that. Below are a video and a photo from Studio Donegal. It shows their mindset (the Made Slow exhibition poster), the spinning, the warping, the weaving, the sewing and the finished product.

During my visit I ordered a cap in fabric from the top roll in the photo.

In Kilcar you can also find Donegal Yarn, a business that specialises in spinning and making yarn for knitting and weaving. Also in town there is a facility, Cuan Tamhnaigh Teo, that finishes (washes and treats woven tweed (and other textiles) once it leaves the loom).

On my way back to Ardara I stopped at Killybegs, Irelands main fishing port. I never made it off the harbour since I started talking to a local fisherman and then started watching two seals and a cormorant in the water. By now I was really beginning to feel the stress that the trip was causing, despite me enjoying it very much. It manifested itself through nausea, dizziness, pain in my eyes and negative thoughts (all familiar to me). That I had caught a cold didn´t make matters any better.

I tried to soldier on and on Tuesday morning I checked out of the Bayview B&B and they drove me to Molloy & Sons, a small family business that machine weave their tweeds (the way most of the Donegal tweed is produced). There I met with Kieran Molloy, a very friendly and knowledgeable man that showed me how they make their fantastic tweeds. I was so taken in by the visit and what I saw that I forgot to film and take photos off their tweeds. Just like with all the other businesses I visited, the export to the US has dropped due to political events this year. But I got the impression that they were very actively searching for new markets elsewhere.

To make up for my lack of footage I link to a short video about Molloy & Sons made by Jamie Delaney, Keith Nally and Charlotte Rey. Enjoy!

Molloy & Sons are also part of the group of tweed weavers that are working on getting Donegal Tweed protected by legislation so that you´d have to produce it in Donegal and thru certain methods. Hopefully an application will be made in December this year. This protection is somewhat similar to the Trademark protection that Harris Tweed has.

After my visit Kieran drove me back to Ardara where I caught the bus to Donegal Town so that I could get the bus to Dublin. In Donegal Town I had a mental breakdown and, crying, called my wife telling her I couldn´t cope. After instructing me to do some breathing exercises we decided that I should cancel the meet up with V and Doyle and that my wife would book me into a B&B/AirBnB so that I wouldn´t have to spend the night at the airport.

I got on the bus to Dublin but bumpy roads and aggressive driving made me car/bus sick and that didn´t do me any good. My anxiety got worse when we approached Dublin and when we pulled up at the airport I was in a really bad shape. I got out of the bus, got my bag but wasn´t able to go to the bus stop so I got into the terminal building where I sat down against a wall crying. Soon staff noticed me and when I wasn´t able to speak coherently to them an ambulance was called. I got into the ambulance but no physical problems were detected when they examined me, and why would there be since I was having a mental breakdown. The ambulance personnel helped me call V and Doyle and they came and picked me up and drove me to the AirBnB. When I got there the landlady helped me book a taxi to the airport early next morning. I got something to eat and then went to bed. I didn´t sleep very well but I slept a little. When I got to the airport the next morning the Special Assistance desk at the terminal helped me get through the security check and to my gate as I still was in a pretty bad shape. I managed to get on the plane by myself and after landing in Copenhagen I got on the train to Sweden and my wife, and dog Sigge, met me in Malmoe.

If you want to see more photos from my trip they can be seen on my Flicker account. Click HERE

My playlist for the trip is available on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1nWcWaGFSmKSxFiJh29o0b?si=dbd49d4c591e48e2