Graveyard in Letterkenny

Explorer Tom Conwal Parish Church Graveyard in Letterkenny Town is having a serious feud with the rain right now, soaking its fancy metal railings and skull-and-crossbones markers. It’s been laying out its dead since the seventeenth century, which means some of them have had plenty of time to complain about the damp. Keep your umbrella up and try not to wake the 1650s regulars!

Explorer Tom Church in Letterkenny appears to stand on an older seventeenth-century parish church site. A 1654 survey mentions it in one busy breath with a Friday market, two yearly fairs, a stone house and a bridge. I can almost hear the town refusing to stand still for the surveyor.

Explorer Tom Blake’s Bar sits next door to The Central, acting like a cheeky sibling shouting over the noise. If you hear loud singing, it’s definitely them causing trouble in Upper Main Street. Ideal for a moody photo you'll pretend wasn't posed.

Explorer Tom The Brewery stands in Market Square, pulsing with foam and stories that taste better than the ale. It’s basically the beating heart of Letterkenny, bubbling over with secrets you’ll forget by morning. Spot the oldest stone and give it a name.

Explorer Tom PoleStar Monument is standing tall in Letterkenny, looking like it knows exactly where north is even when the clouds are playing hide-and-seek with the sun. Saint Patrick would probably have told it to stop showing off and just get on with blessing the crops already, but it wouldn’t listen. Bring a flask and pretend you own the place.

Explorer Tom Battlefield in Ballyboe Lisenan claims a fake king visited to inspect the troops but got lost in the mud and never came back. Nobody can disprove it because the man was wearing a disguise and had terrible luck with his boots that day. Pick a stone, any stone, and invent its biography.

Explorer Tom Battle of Farsetmore in County Donegal is where Hugh O'Donnell kicked Shane O'Neill's backside into the River Swilly. Rumour has it a local goat watched from a cliff, heartbroken her mate picked a fight instead of romance. Give it a pat on the way past, it's had a long life.

Explorer Tom The Dry Arch Monument is a stainless steel flex for workers who probably just wanted a decent cup of tea and a break. The poet who fell in the ditch nearby wrote about 'architectural integrity' until he hit his head on the concrete edge. Bring a camera and your most suspicious face.

Explorer Tom Conwal Wheeled Cross Slab is a tiny, battered fragment that survived the mess of a 1968 tidy-up. It’s just the top half of a wheeled cross, weathered smooth on the cairn. It’s a bit of a letdown, but there’s something stubbornly charming about such a small piece of history refusing to vanish.

Explorer Tom Godfrey O'Donnell Graveslab claims to be the final resting spot of a guy who died in 1258. It’s got a wheeled-cross with some fancy interlace that looks like Celtic knotting meets a bicycle wheel. The corner is broken, but the carving is still sharp enough to make you wonder if Godfrey was actually into cycling.

Explorer Tom Gregory Hill stands in County Donegal, keeping its access details firmly unknown. The name sounds like a word you’d mumble into your breakfast cereal, yet it sits there as a solid geological fact without offering a single helpful footpath.

Explorer Tom European Yew in County Donegal is a yew, which means it’s tough, old, and probably poisonous if you look at it wrong. It’s the kind of tree that survives empires and bad haircuts. Bring your own legend, I've run out, make up a story about a dragon living in its branches.