Sure, it looks good on paper – “a modern holiday cottage located on an elevated site in a peaceful setting overlooking Donegal Bay”.

The cottage is about 4 km from Donegal, which translates into a €10 cab fare. Okay, we were prepared for that because when we booked it we were still thinking we would rent a vehicle. There is no phone in the cottage (we weren’t warned about that) so we had to decide whether we wanted to incur high mobile phone roaming charges or arrange pick ups in advance. We decided to make advance arrangements with a cab.

Paddy Kane, our driver, is a little bit of heaven. We arranged a pick up with him for our first night and he showed up on time to take us to dinner. He said we could call him from any of the pubs – they all know him!

When we arrived at the cottage yesterday afternoon it was freezing. No problem, we’ll turn on the registers. After several attempts, and no heat, Pat e-mailed the owner. We were told the heat is controlled digitally (by the owner); the registers come on between 7 and 9 in the morning and again in the evening. We also learned that the fireplace is for show only – it can’t be turned on. No problem we thought – when we come home from our evening out the place will be warm.

We thought we should leave a light on for ourselves so we wouldn’t be coming into the dark when we got home. We searched for the kitchen lights and finally Pat found a sheet that said the switch for the counter lighting was “under the press beside the Hob”. Okay, that wasn’t helpful!

After a night of music in a couple of pubs, Paddy brought us home to a cold house. The thought of getting into a cold bed wasn’t appealing. I attempted to turn on the bedside lamp on Pat’s side of the bed. No luck. I tried my side – no luck. We couldn’t find a switch on either lamp, although we followed the cords and made sure the power plug was powered on (yes, you have to flip a switch to turn on the plugs). We wondered what the odds would be of both bulbs being burned out; I finally turned one of the lamps upside down and found a small switch.

The place was still freezing when Pat got up this morning, and his shower was less than successful. The first problem was no towels. I remembered seeing towels in one of the upstairs rooms so he grabbed them. This is the second place we have been that hasn’t had face cloths – do they not use them here? There was a note on the bathroom door that we had to turn on the Immersion switch to heat the water. Pat did that but he said the water barely dribbled out of the shower head.

Once I was up we got started on the laundry. There didn’t seem to be any water coming into the machine. More fiddling and Pat checked more of the notes left in the kitchen and we found there was a water pump that needed to be switched on (that probably would have helped the shower situation). We turned that on and the machine started, but just kept tumbling the clothes and, after half an hour we didn’t seem to be any closer to clean clothes. We thought stopping and restarting it might do the trick, but we couldn’t get the door open (I guess because it was mid-cycle). I hit the “No Spin” button and we went out for the day and left it running. It seemed safe enough since there was very little water involved.

We had a nice day out in spite of the threatening weather. Paddy picked us up on schedule and we headed for the Craft Village. Paddy had warned us there wouldn’t be much there; there wasn’t and we didn’t even go in. We asked Paddy to take us to the wool shop. When we got there it was closed, but Paddy assured us the owner would be there soon. We did a quick tour of the Catholic Church and when we returned to the wool shop they had opened.

I knew what I wanted and it didn’t take me long to pick it up. I got a couple of patterns and four different-coloured skeins of Donegal wool. There is enough in each skein for a scarf, maybe a hat, or a couple of other ideas from the patterns I bought. Pat got a couple of pairs of Donegal socks, and a warm hat. When chatting with the owner about our trip he said we were “wasting our time” to stay five days in Belfast! It was just a little village you know when it started out.

We wanted to tour the Donegal Castle today but it is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. We’ve noticed that a lot of shops already have reduced winter hours. Paddy came to the rescue and we decided to take him up on his offer to drive us to Slieve League, the highest cliffs in Europe.

We took the coastal road and saw some lovely scenery. Paddy drives like everyone- too fast and on the wrong side! Before he retired and started driving his cab he worked on all the roads we were on. He waved and honked at all the road workers as we passed them in the rain. We had some good chats about things we saw along the way – for the most part we could understand what he was saying! Once we were back in town he dropped us off at the cottage with a promise to pick us up later for dinner.

But back to the laundry. We were very happy to see that the “End” light was showing red on the machine when we got home. We were able to open the door and pull out the water-logged load. Obviously the “No Spin” wasn’t a good option. We tried getting the machine to start again and, through the power of something we don’t really understand, the machine began spinning, the cycle ended and we were able to start another load. Fortunately the drier worked as we would expect and at least one of us should have clean and dry clothes to repack for tomorrow’s trip.

Location:Donegal, Ireland