Donegal’s Great Outdoors By Iain Miller
The Hidden Gems
My name is Iain Miller and I am a Mountain Instructor living, working and playing in County Donegal. Over the last ten years I have explored every corner of the county from the great storm beach of Glenlough Bay to the blow holes of Umphin Island.
Over the coming months I will take you to places in Donegal where few people know exist and even fewer people have ever been. I have made the first ascents of over 60 of Donegal’s previously unclimbed sea stacks and over a 1000 new rock climbs in both Scotland and Ireland, I’ve visited every mountain peak in the county both guiding international visitors and teaching trainee Mountain Leaders navigation and am currently writing a guidebook to the enormous amount of rock climbing locations in Donegal.
For the last three years I have been running http://www.uniqueascent.ie/, a mountain training and guiding company with a very simple ethos, “Every ascent is unique to you” I will take you to places where fewer people have ever stood than have stood moon.
The County of Donegal is blessed with the amount and quality of its natural and unspoilt scenery, with miles of empty sandy beaches, an archipelago of beautiful islands off its western coast, spectacular sea cliff scenery and many many miles of uninhabited and rarely frequented open uplands.
But where Donegal’s true blessing is found is high in its mountain ranges. With more climbable rock than the rest of Ireland combined boasting two major Irish mountain ranges, over a thousand kilometres of coastline, one hundred sea stacks and many diverse climbing and walking locations from the mudstone roofs at Muckross in the South West of the county to the Granite slabs of Malin Head, Ireland’s most northerly point.
Donegal currently plays host to a lifetime’s worth of world class rock climbing and hill walking in some of the most beautiful and unspoilt places in Ireland. The scope for your personal exploration and the opportunity to discover solitude in the county’s little known places is unlimited, as there is an unexplored adventure waiting through every mountain pass and around every remote coastal headland.
Some of the places we will visit over the coming months are as diverse in their nature as they are unique and beautiful.
We will visit the lake under the lake on Owey Island, the summit of the Tormore Ridge on Tory Island, the Land of the Giants in Glenlough Bay, The Sturrall Headland, the ice falls of Muckish and the Derryveagh Mountains. These are but a few of what the great outdoors of Donegal has to offer everyone from the casual walker to the hardened mountaineer.
Play my videos above – and enjoy
Slieve Snaght from Errigal
Slievetooey
The view from the summit of the Sturrall Headland
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