I really enjoyed my time in Northern Ireland. The coastline took my breath away. I also love writing travel features as you really get to indulge your creative side and pretend you're Bill Bryson, only with less facial hair.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
BELFAST AND NORTHERN IRELAND
There are two people running hell for leather towards the coach; hair wild and bags flying in all directions. They look like they might slip on the pebbled slope which is damp from the frequent showers.
The driver’s seen them. Grinning wickedly, he keeps driving and rounds the corner. Eventually they catch up, panting slightly. He opens the doors and they stagger on, red-faced. If there’s one person you don’t want to cross, it’s this Belfast coach driver who has the power to leave you at various points along the Antrim coast. Oh, the power.
Belfast is a beautiful city. The stunning City Hall in Donegal Square is a key meeting and orientation point in the centre. The odd nervous bride or groom stand outside, mingling with the visitors studying the cool façade and the stained glass windows. It was built to celebrate Queen Victoria granting Belfast city status in 1888 and there’s a giant Titanic memorial in the centre, which was surrounded by goth kids.
After a bit of a walk, I spot a giant tiled fish and realise I’m at Lagan’s Lookout. The iconic Harland and Wolff shipbuilding cranes are jutting out of the scenery the other side of the river Lagan. I’m not sure how I got here, and I can sense a long tiring trudge in the opposite direction to find my hostel again.
All the tourists stop at the Crown Liquor Saloon. All but one that is: I managed the target of walking past at least six times a day but avoid going in, due to the fact it looked like a completely packed tourist trap, I didn’t want to hog a booth by myself and I’m not overly fond of Guinness. Instead I walked into the Beaten Docket (that’s a losing betting slip, fact fans) next door, which was a normal local with most people trying to watch the football. I found myself stood in front of two Irish guys craning their necks to watch the TV behind me, so I apologised for getting in the way.
They asked where I was from; I said Portsmouth. They used to live in England so they’ve heard of that. “It’s near Newcastle isn’t it?” Oh dear. The Portsmouth tourist board clearly has a lot of work to do.
Finding myself with a day spare, I decided to give myself a break and let someone ferry me around for a bit. I booked a coach trip to the Giant’s Causeway. One of the first things pointed out by the driver was the Europa Hotel, with the dubious distinction of being the most bombed hotel in a European city. It’s the place where all the media would be stationed so the IRA would deliberately target the area, knowing their cause would be plastered across the news coverage. The blasts managed to miss the Crown on the opposite side of the road, which made many locals think that perhaps a higher being was on their side.
When Northern Ireland is mentioned, the words ‘Oh, there’s a beautiful coastline there’ are rarely thought of first. There are visions of gun battles in the streets and frightening murals, although nowadays the murals are a must-see stop for tourists and gun battles are thankfully no more frequent here than anywhere else. But the coastline really is amazing. As the coach meandered its way along the North Antrim Coast road from Larne to Cushendun, the water looked beautiful. The coastal road was built to replace the Old Irish Highway and to make the movement of English troops easier. It was also the main route for those trying to escape the Potato Famine in 1845. Parts of the Old Highway still remain, with crumbling bridges and uneven mounds to the side of the newer road. We went past Loughareema, the haunted lake which can disappear and reappear within a matter of days due to some odd phenomenon.
“If you look into the distance,” says our tour guide, “past Rathlin Island, you can actually see Scotland.” I peered across the water to see a dark coastline looming up. It’s the Mull of Kintyre, and immediately that damn song with those horrific bagpipes rises in my mind. Paul McCartney, you are at once a genius and a bastard.
There are spectacular dizzying and green views from the Lanyon Viaduct in Glendun, just one of the Seven Glens of Antrim (the others being Glentaisie, Glenshesk, Glenaan, Glencorp, Glenballyemon and Glenariff, should you need to learn them for a pub quiz). There are little pockets of villages here and there along the glens, and I start planning the construction of some kind of forest house. The glens themselves are beautiful, although a little forlorn and deserted.
We pass Ballycastle, where Sorley Boy MacDonnall is buried at Bonamairgy Abbey. I mishear the name as ‘Surly Boy’ and spend all day thinking he was a particularly grumpy teen.
“Surly Boy, the English are coming!”
Shrug. Glare. “Whatever.”
Descended from a Scots family, the MacDonnalls married into Irish landholders and began to spread their empire in the area, with plenty of battles against the English and O’Neill clan who were trying to remove them from Ireland.
They also helped survivors from the Girona, the Spanish Armada ship carrying treasures which foundered off the rocky coast. I read that when his son was beheaded and put on display in Dublin, Sorley saw the mess and responded: “My son hath many heads.” Brilliant fatherly response there. Ballycastle itself looked like a very peaceful place despite rapid housebuilding, but we’re informed that next week is the Ould Lammas Fair and hundreds of people will cram into the street.
There’s a menu passing along the coach so we can choose our lunch. Some people are taking ages to choose; an hour later and still half of us haven’t looked at it. The driver is having a grump.
“Where’s the menu?” he says, storming over after the coach stops for a break. “How long does it take someone to choose their food? If you want something to eat, don’t get off here without deciding what you want.”
It’s like being back at school. I wait a bit and dutifully hand the menu back. The driver turns round and for a second I think he’s going to hacking at my neck with the laminated card, he looks that annoyed. “How far down the coach were you? Has everyone looked at this yet?”
“Er,” I said, a little bit scared. “I was quite near the front. It was only halfway here so I walked up there and waited for it.”
“Show me where you were,” he demanded. I pointed out my seat and made a run for it.
The first main stop is the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge. Apparently it’s been tested to hold up to ten tonnes. I know some tourists are a bit on the large side, but that’s ridiculous. The bridge is erected every summer from the mainland so fishermen can reach the salmon off little Carrick Island.
In some places the water is a vibrant green and blue, looking as if we’re in a hidden Spanish cove rather than on top of a hill in Northern Ireland with rainclouds drawing ever closer.
It’s quite a short bridge, but is a whopping 30 metres above the rocks. It also wobbles considerably from the long queue of people stomping across and there’s no chance of stopping in the middle for too long to take snaps as the queue in each direction builds up fast. The bridge is almost a mile along a steep track, up pebbled hills, steep steps, back down more steps, round a few corners, up a slope, and along a bit further. The coach is picking us up in an hour, and if we’re late it’ll just disappear without us.
Now there’s some more anger over the menu. It turns out the coach operators had given us the old menu, so some people had chosen meals which don’t exist anymore. The tour leader is trying to sort things out in between providing entertainment.
“See the sheep outside? You might notice the coloured marks on them. Those are to show which are Catholic and which are Protestant.” I snigger. Some people look confused. Meanwhile, the coach driver is trying to navigate his way through tiny hilly villages which have surprisingly heavy traffic. “What are you doing? Where do you want me to go?” he occasionally snarls at cars and everyone on the coach giggles into their hands.
The worst thing about dining alone is that you stay alone. Even if you’re on a huge table, everyone will walk straight past and find somewhere else to go. It’s not just me eating my soup by myself. Another man is sat at the back of the room, and someone else is looking a bit miserable as well. The thing is you can’t just walk along and invite yourself to join a group (or I don’t feel I can anyway) because you’re intruding, then they’ll hate you and will put bits of napkin in your sandwich when you’re not looking.
The two Irish guys in the pub had warned me about the Giant’s Causeway. “What d’ya want to go there for? There’s nothing to do. It’s really boring,” they said in between pints. I was a little bit worried there would just be three columns and I’d get bored; once again I was wrong.
The Causeway was formed around 60 million years ago when a volcanic explosion threw up the basalt which then cooled in a bizarre pattern. The rocks have created thousands of uneven hexagonal shapes, looking rather like an enormous stony ‘Blockbusters’ board. It’s hard to believe it’s natural. Of course some people prefer to believe it was the work of the giant Finn McCool, who built the Causeway to take him to Scotland (where there’s a similar formation at Fingal’s Cave). He then fell asleep and his angry Scottish counterpart Benandonner marched across looking for a scrap, saw the sleeping Finn, mistook him for a child and fled, believing his rival must be even larger in size. He also ripped up the Causeway as he ran. I think perhaps Benandonner has been misrepresented in legend. Well, it’s the mythical equivalent of building a tarmac road from your front door to your neighbour’s ‘Welcome’ mat, and you know how pissed off they’d be.
The views are spectacular. I walk around on the cliff tops for a while, just relaxing, then spend 20 minutes trying not to slip down the crooked steps which have an old railing on one side and a dip along the cliff wall on the other. One poor woman is trying to drag her pushchair up.
Rounding the corner, I’m greeted by a sign cheerfully warning that falling over is likely, as is being hit by rocks from above, or if I’m not careful I could be mown down by the bus. I whimper slightly, wonder why I didn’t consider bringing my cycle helmet and accidentally skid along the gravel track, followed by a man who’s also flailing a bit but trying to look cool about it. I recognise him as one of the other lone diners. After almost tripping into each other a few times, we introduce ourselves. He’s an Englishman working in Northern Ireland and trying to make the most of his time off.
“Did you enjoy eating lunch by yourself?” he asks cheekily.
We head towards the enormous basalt columns known as the ‘Pipe Organ’ and take separate ways trying to climb the smallest stones. This is because he appears to be brave and nimble footed, while I’m a coward. I pause to text a friend who knows I’m away but has still inexplicably invited me to a party (“Would love to come tonight but I’m stuck up the Giant’s Causeway, terribly sorry”) and sit admiring the views, while around me families, elderly couples and teenagers gingerly step around.
This is Northern Ireland’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site, but people are freely allowed to trample across it. It’s starting to rain and I’m a bit worried about falling off, so I walk back down and across the main ‘carpet’ of stones, which are blackened and covered in sea spray. The rain starts misting down again and there are puddles lurking in the rocks. Not all of the hexagons are completely stuck fast and a few tilt slightly when you stand on them. If I’d actually done some research before going then I would have tried to spot the different parts (the Giant’s Boot, the Camel’s Hump, the Giant’s Harp). The sea is battering against the end, where a couple of backpackers are chattering gaily over the noise. It’s odd to stare out across the waves and think that the next landmass you’d come across is Scotland some way off.
On the way back, we stopped opposite Dunluce Castle to take a few pictures. It’s been deserted for centuries. The second Earl of Antrim’s family unsurprisingly refused to live there after part of the kitchen toppled into the sea in 1639, killing several and leaving behind one very frightened lad sat in the far corner. The castle is romantic and picturesque, perched on a rocky outcrop. We weren’t allowed to get too close (I’m presuming we’d have to sit through Jackie Chan’s ‘The Medallion’ to see what other parts of it looks like, as I’m told it features in there a bit) but I wasn’t sure if it was because of time constraints, or just because we weren’t film stars. That was a bit of a disappointment as I love daydreaming my way around ruined castles.
Dunluce Castle was the seat of the Earl of Antrim until the Battle of the Boyne, then it fell into disuse and is now protected by the Environment and Heritage Service. The Spanish armada ship Girona famously sank not far from here, and the survivors were helped by the then incumbent Sorley Boy, who also took a few parts from the ship to use in the castle such as cannon.
The heavens open again as the coach makes its way back into Belfast. The coach stops directly outside the hostel, but I put my umbrella up anyway and head up the road to buy some newspapers and a drink, then I sit in KFC by myself and have a think. One of my friends used to live here and he’s very jealous that he couldn’t come with me, but he phoned earlier and insisted we’d both come back, hire a car and drive round to see the sights. It sounds very tempting.
City Hall
Lagan’s Lookout
Crown Liquor Saloon
Europa Hotel
North Antrim Coast
Rathlin Island
Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge
Giant’s Causeway
Northern Ireland Environment and Heritage Centre
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