Safe Return Doubtful

I finished that last post having just arrived at Portnablagh pier. Some of the beaches around the Donegal coast are not peaceful stopovers. It’s the height of the season and in the evening the families on the beaches give way to partying young adults and teenagers. Portnablagh was not such a place, a really good place for a couple of nights. 

I met lots of people, many of them swimming or fishing who came over to comfort a lame dog, and be nice about my van. There was one other campervan, who arrived just for breakfast, and we had a long chat. They were from Kerry, in the Munster province, and experimenting with their first ever trip in a campervan that belonged to their friends. They were enjoying it enough to be looking for a purchase. They were on a road trip that included Donegal coastal sights, rounds of golf on alternate days, and culminating in the GA final and Croke Park on Sunday. They were also rugby fans, and we spoke a bit about the crossover between two similar games. The guy told me that players crossing over was extremely rare; so much so, that he could only name two relatively famous players who had done so, Mick Galwey, the second row, the only man ever to win al All-Ireland championship in both sports, and Rob Carney, a full back with 95 Irish caps, two Lions tours, and who now commentates.  

Late on on the first night I was there, an old chap knocked politely at the van late in the evening and recommended I moved the van a bit higher up the pier. I had watched  the afternoon tide come in, and it seemed about a metre below me. The guy told me that the night tide was always a bit higher, and better to be safe than sorry. I moved twenty metres up, but don’t think there was much, if any, difference in the level. 

After two nights at Portnablagh I drove about twenty kilometres out into the West Donegal coast to a village called Meenalough below a barren hill of moorland called Cnoc Fola. At the far north tip of the peninsula is a piece of headland called Bloody Foreland. I had researched it previously and set it aside as a fine stopover and some good walking. 

This piece of spectacular coastline is part of the 76 kilometre Sli Dhun na nGall hiking trail. This section, Slí An Earagail, constitutes one of the suggested five days to complete it. It actually does not include the headland of Bloody Foreland, which can be very boggy, but I was keen to take it on, and walked a ninety minute circuit just after I arrived of about eight kilometres. The park up is absolutely wonderful, though a challenge if the wind gets up, as it did the following morning. It gives a tremendous view across rocky beaches and cliffs in both directions. 

I walked the section to the south the following morning, still alone due to Roja’s injury, and met two other hikers, a Scottish couple walking the whole route. 

Keen to get out of the 30 mile per hour wind, I left after lunch on Wednesday and headed to Derrybeg town half an hour down the coast, then headed out on to the large area of sand dunes that surround Gweedore Bay and its little beach. From here a small tourist boat crosses daily in the summer to Gola Island. The dunes made for an excellent base, sheltered from the wind, and yet in the sun which had poked out from three days of low cloud. This is a popular swimming spot, and in the early evening was busy. 

Over the three days since we were at the vets Roja had only very slightly improved. I called yesterday and arranged an X-ray for this morning, driving the hour to Letterkenny early, and dropping him off at 8:15 am. He was ready to be collected just after midday. It was once again, excellent service and treatment for a foreign visitor, and quite cheap also, which I hadn’t expected. 

The result is that there is no hairline fracture, good news perhaps, but the swollen joint is extremely painful still. We will have to wait to see how much it eases in the next week. After that, the option could be a Librela injection. In Portugal the vet recommended this to me, though it was expensive, at more than 150 euros, and lasts just for a month. When I mentioned it to my vet, they were less keen, and it costs even more. Here in Letterkenny, they are recommending it if the pain doesn’t ease, and the cost is 57 euros. 

The pain relief he is now on helps somewhat, but he still wakes in the night, uncomfortable with the pain. He has eaten very little, and as I speak, hasn’t had a number two for almost six days.. though hopefully, that is about to change, as the vet gave me some laxative. He walks about ten metres, twice a day, to take a piss. There is a chance that neither time, another week, nor Librela, will ease the pain, and the degeneration to the elbow is severe. In which case, it will be a question of how the quality of his life is. 

Of course, hopefully it won’t come to that. One of the stresses he has at the moment is the inability to get about, loss of his daily routine (being out for 2-3 hours a day), and that clearly depresses him. He bears some small weight on the left paw, which has very gradually improved over the week.