It's a handy drive until you get some 12 kilometres beyond the very pretty village of Malin itself, writes Brian Byrne. Then the road to the head of the same name gets twistier. More narrow too. Not a lot of room for two cars meeting. And there's a surprising amount of traffic for a road to, well, nowhere, really.
That's if you take it that you've reached an end to Ireland when you get to Malin Head. Except that it's not, of course. It's the place where many waved to the Irish emigrants sailing out of Belfast as they brought their own little bit of Ireland and their hopes to further fields.
As did Annie Doherty to her brother Packie in 1908. Her thoughts are commemorated on the Head. "We watched you until you were gone out of sight at Tower," she wrote her brother later. "I need not tell you how we felt."
The Tower she mentions is there since Napoleonic times, constructed to watch for potential attackers. It later served similar duty in the two Great Wars, and the Lloyds marine insurance company used it for ship to shore communications using semaphore until 1902 when they had Marconi set up a radio system there.
It's a rugged place, but with a wildness that shares its own magic with anyone who comes by. And for the WW2 Allied pilots returning from their North Atlantic convoy patrols, the sight of 'EIRE' laid out in white stones in the field just below the tower must have been a welcome sight as they headed home, often almost on the fumes in their fuel tanks, to their Northern Ireland base.
Back along the road is the Met Eireann weather station, which was during that same war the site of a radio direction finder system secretly set up by Britain with the agreement of the Irish 'neutral' Government. And those of us born subsequent to that war will know Malin as always being a part of the radio shipping forecasts, the Head's name given to the sea area beyond it.
Well worth the trip, whatever the weather. And one thing is sure, if you want a dose of fresh air, it just doesn't get any fresher.
As did Annie Doherty to her brother Packie in 1908. Her thoughts are commemorated on the Head. "We watched you until you were gone out of sight at Tower," she wrote her brother later. "I need not tell you how we felt."
