The actor best known as Superintendent Ted Hastings in Line of Duty is bringing Homer and Heaney to County Donegal. Our writer joins him for oysters as he takes his dogs for a windswept walk along the shore
There is a story about this seaside town, says Adrian Dunbar, as we lunch on oysters and crabcakes in Bundoran, on the southern edge of County Donegal. Outside Madden’s Bridge Bar, the sky is the colour of porridge. Inside, the Guinness is bible black. And in the distance, the peaks that rise up over the Wild Atlantic Way are shrouded in cloud.
It’s the story of an ancestral homecoming, says the 59-year-old actor, now best known for his long-running role as Superintendent Ted Hastings in the BBC police drama Line of Duty. In the early 1960s, Dunbar relates, a young man was brought back to Ireland from Los Angeles by his parents. “As they came down through Bundoran, he was sitting in the car thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be so bored.’ But as he came across the bridge where we’re sitting, he saw the waves and just sat up in the car, shocked that nobody was surfing. He went and got himself a piece of board, fashioned a surfboard out of it, and actually managed to get up on a wave.”
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