Nationwide is in
Donegal this week
16.11.20
NATIONWIDE, on RTÉ One, is
celebrating Donegal this week with four programmes on
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Presenters Anne
Cassin and Bláthnaid Ní Chófaigh and reporters Niall
Martin and Eileen Magnier have been up and down the
county finding interesting stories and filming in
beautiful locations for this week's special programmes.
This evening, Anne Cassin visits the spectacular and
beautiful Glenveagh National Park, the second largest
national park in Ireland and speaks to Sorcha O’Donnell,
one of the tour guides at the Castle to hear all about
its history. She takes a tour of the Walled and Pleasure
Gardens at the park and meets the head gardener who
tells the story behind the gardens.
Anne also chats with one of Donegal’s best-known
ambassador’s, Noel Cunningham who talks about some of
the best places to explore in his native county.
Reporter Niall Martin visited one of Donegal’s secret
highlights during the summer Sliabh Liag and got two
distinct views of the cliffs from land and sea. |
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On Tuesday, Nationwide
meets some of the many crafts people, food producers and
small business owners working away in rural locations
dotted right across Donegal.
There is often much emphasis put on Information
Technology and High-Technology companies as the way
ahead for developing the economy, but in Donegal a wide
range of local manufacturing companies are bucking that
trend. Reporter Helen Mark went to see how Donegal’s
long history of ‘making things’ is having an impact not
just locally but far beyond their borders. Reporter
Niall Martin meets the woman behind a very novel family
run business which was started five years ago. Noreen
Harding set up Pixalili, a textile printing and design
studio located on the Wild Atlantic Way.
On Wednesday, reporter Niall Martin talks to Fr Pat Ward
of Kincasslagh & Burtonport parishes who decided to take
his masses onto Facebook Live with an added bonus of a
daily meditation, and attracted quite a following from
Ireland and abroad.
One of Ireland’s most unique and historic walkways is in
the northwest where Lough Swilly in Donegal once met
Lough Foyle in Derry. In the 1800s the marshy wastelands
were transformed into a fertile plain in one of the most
ambitious land reclamation projects on these islands.
Today the area is home to an array of migrating birds
and wild fowl and hundreds of walkers and cyclists are
drawn here to enjoy the Inch Level Trail. Mary Harte
reports on this rich landscape of walks and hikes.
There has been a great increase in what’s become known
as community archaeology in Ireland with local people
anxious to preserve their heritage Eileen Magnier meets
one group in County Donegal that have been working on a
stunning but almost secret monument. |
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In the final of
Nationwide’s week of programmes about Donegal, Bláthnaid
Ní Chofaigh visits a couple who have planted shrubs,
trees and plants from around the world in the most
spectacular location in the north of the county. Seamus
O’Donnell has created a garden from scratch using plants
that attract wildlife and plants that can withstand the
wild Atlantic weather. Cluain na dTor, meaning ‘Meadow
of Shrubs’ is an oasis of calm sheltered from the harsh
elements that surround it. Seamus lives here with his
wife Deirdre and daughter Hannah in the house built by
his grandparents in the 1920’s. Plus, reporter Helen
Mark meets a group of farmers who have an idea to bring
new uses for the Donegal Uplands. |
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