Ben Lowry: Sleepy Creeslough familiar to many people from across Province

The county is a popular holiday destination for people from across the province.

While Creeslough might not be known to those Northern Ireland folk who holiday in the west of Donegal, in resorts such as Bundoran, or those who head south, to villages such as Portnoo, Creeslough is en route to the much-loved town of Dunfanaghy.

The area around Portnablagh, just up the road from Creeslough, has long been a highly desirable location for a second home.Creeslough stands at a crossroads between the road from Letterkenny to Falcarragh, and another road that winds its way past Doe Castle and on towards the far side of Sheephaven Bay.

Thus anyone heading to destinations such as the beautiful Horn Head peninsula, or the Rosapenna hotel, or to Carrigart, will know it.All these locations are popular with Northern Irish tourists.

I am one such visitor because I spent many childhood summers in the area around the stunningly situated fishing port of Downings, and the breathtaking Trá na Rosann bay beyond it.

There is a poignant irony in the fact that I remember Creeslough as a town in which we stopped for petrol or lunch when heading towards places such as the nearby Ards Forest Park.

Accidental gas explosions are very rare events. Ones in which people die are, mercifully, even more so.

That a disaster of this nature and on this scale has happened in friendly, sleepy Creeslough, somewhere so many of us associate with happy holidays, rather than in a big city, makes it all the more shocking.