There's something special about Donegal town. For a start, to get to it, you have to negotiate the odd bog or mountain and if you're coming from Dublin via Enniskillen, you have to go right over the top of Pettigo mountain. Perhaps that's why, when you finally arrive, you feel you've achieved something.
In the past, though, Donegal was little more than a comfort stop for tourists on their way to Killybegs, Glencolumbkille or Glenveagh. Not any more - not since a group of local business people got together and decided to put their town on the map. As a result, Donegal now has three thriving tourist attractions, and visitors no longer see the town as a throughway to somewhere else.
"The idea was born out of frustration, really," says Maurice Timony, local newsagent and businessman. "There were no facilities in the town for visitors and, though we wanted to provide some, we knew that anything we did would have to be commercially viable."
It's six years now since that first meeting at which Donegal Town Enterprise was established. The Peace and Reconciliation Fund put up £3,000 for a feasibility study and the group earmarked three projects for development: Donegal Castle, the Railway Heritage Museum and the Waterbus. Donegal Town Enterprise was on its way.
The choice of visitor attractions was deliberate. The Donegal Railway Restoration Society was already in place with a worldwide membership. The Waterbus idea was underway and the castle, once home to the O'Donnells, was coming to the end of a seven-year restoration programme, undertaken by D·chas, the Heritage Service, and funded partly by the European Union. Wisely, the town was drawing on its own resources.
"We've had some big fundraising events and local people can now see the results of their work," says Timony, who is honorary secretary of Donegal Town Enterprise. Another plus is that since this is a community effort, what's good for one of the three attractions is also good for the others.
The Waterbus was initially financed with donations of £500 from local businesses. "We bought a second-hand glass-topped boat and built a temporary jetty," says Timony. "There were three prongs to the enterprise - adequate insurance, the building of a permanent jetty and securing the Waterbus itself - and we have now achieved all three. And though we'd have welcomed it, we got no statutory support at all. Instead, we had to raise a loan of £90,000 to buy the Waterbus, which we will upgrade. The insurance cover is good and we've received planning permission for a new jetty which later will incorporate a marina with landing stages for 50 boats."
There is also a plan to open a small museum devoted to Donegal's maritime history.
That's the business end of it. The fun side is that the master, Billy Bustard, a former fisherman, takes the boat out with each tide so that people get a chance to see, among other features, the water life, the seal colony and the Customs House which served the old famine ships bound for America and Canada. And all this viewed against the dramatic backdrop of the Blue Stacks.
"And," adds Timony, "since the boat doesn't have propellers but only water jets, it's not causing any environmental damage."
A few minutes' walk from the Diamond is the Railway Heritage Centre, situated in the former railway station. In the old days, you could board a train in Glenties or Killybegs, change at Strabane in Tyrone and continue on to Dublin or Belfast - and from either of these make your way to England or Scotland. Not any longer, though. The nearest train station now is in Sligo.
The museum is popular with railway buffs from all over the world and its photographic display - a marvellous charting of Donegal history - includes a picture of the train specially hired to take Orangemen off to Rossnowlagh for the 12th. There were so many of them that they had to be accommodated in open grain trucks.
The line was a busy one, used to transport cattle, sheep, wool and coal, but as well as that the railway ran an express letter service (costing two pence in old money). One of the museum guides, Marie Meehan, remembers boxes of young chicks being left in the kitchen of her mother's pub in Dunkineely for collection by the express service. It wasn't just an express service but a social service as well.
"We're funded," says Owen Howells, who works in the insurance industry and is honorary chair of the project, "by membership fees, admissions and sales and we also get a grant from F┴S, which helps with staffing."
The museum gets, on average, 3,000 visitors a year. At the moment, Howells, together with a consultant, is working on a feasibility plan to clear three quarters of a mile of track and lay on a steam-train journey from Donegal to Gorrells' Crossing, on the way to Ballybofey.
Halfway between the museum and the Waterbus stands Donegal Castle, a strong and sturdy dwelling, once the home of the O'Donnells but later acquired by the Brooke family. To visit it is to walk back in history. In the cellar are barrels of wine from France - the O'Donnells liked to trade wine for their fish. By the entrance is a flight of trip stairs, which have irregular steps guaranteed to make an unwelcome intruder stumble. On the upper floor is the magnificent banqueting hall with its huge ornamental stone fireplace, unique in Ireland.
"A lot of our visitors are pre-booked and come as part of a tour," says Sean McLoone, a former bank employee with an interest in history, and now chief guide at the castle. "If they're from Japan, we have to open at 9 a.m. instead of 10. The Japanese like to get started early."
All three projects benefit from the Department of Social Welfare, which funds students on work projects for up to 200 hours over a six-week period. "We get young people doing business studies or tourism," says Sean McLoone. "They are a great asset and of course they're getting practical experience that will be useful to them later."
The 15 per cent drop in visitors this year has, naturally, been bad news. "We're praying for funding now," says Timony. "Especially for the Waterbus. We're putting our hopes in the new Marine Tourism Fund, which has been set up by the Government to support maritime projects. Of course, we have exceptional community support and that keeps us going during the hard times."
Local support isn't confined to Donegal. The town itself and Strabane, which is 35 miles away, are twinned as part of a cross-Border tourist initiative so that visitors who come to Donegal are told all about the attractions in Strabane, and vice-versa.
"Strabane Town Council has been a great help to us. Its paid professionals have given their services to us, which means a lot because we all do this voluntarily," says Timony.
But perhaps the most impressive thing about this whole project is that the people of Donegal had the courage to take on three such diverse tourist attractions and make a success of them. Not bad for a population of 3,000.