Unsurprisingly, I was up before everyone else. We weren’t under the same time pressures as the day before, though we did have a dinner we had to attend in Newtownards.
I made coffee. It was … reasonable. I folded laundry … it wasn’t quite dry. I washed dishes … it was fine. But before long, I felt the need to eat and that meant prying others out of bed. And that led to us discovering that Choo Choo wasn’t feeling well.
I genuinely don’t know what it is, but Choo Choo has a habit of getting sick when we travel. Given, airplanes and crowded trains have a habit of spreading illnesses, but we’ve been locked in a car for days without a lot of contact with others. How the heck she managed to catch anything is beyond me, but nevertheless, here we are.
We went down to the town square and found Lorna’s Kitchen, which is a tiny little restaurant that seems to do breakfasts and a spot of lunch, and little else. It was a good way to start the day, as we had a fair bit ahead of us.
Returning back to the B&B, we packed up and prepared to get going. That meant lugging all our stuff back down to the car out back (which was a lot harder than coming in; the stairs were deceptively steep when you’re lugging 30 kilos of luggage).
And then I realized that I’d somehow lost the key.
The doors on the place used literal skeleton keys. I’d not seen any outside of glass cases and antique stores. But these were real, legitimate, robust (and shiny!) skeleton keys. There was one in a locked box next to the garage, another on a key ring set by the front door. Somehow, the garage key had … disappeared. We upended everything. No sign of it.
This is one of those “oh, come ON” things that sometimes happen that drive you crazy. How did this happen, where did it end up, how did we do something so stupid, how much is the owner going to be pissed at us for losing it? After about 20 minutes of searching, re-searching, double-checking, and digging through everything in the B&B and our bags, the only thing we could do was send a dire apology and hit the road.
Our first stop was Giant’s Causeway. Alex really didn’t want to go. She’s been there two times before (once with me) and a third time totally didn’t appeal to her. Which I totally understand – it’s why I’m not always keen on returning to places I’ve already been, when there are so many other places in the world I want to see.
But.
It’s the Giant’s Causeway, and the girls had never been there. We couldn’t really pass it up.
The last time I was at Giant’s Causeway in 2006, there was a gravel parking lot. You got out, you walked down. Simple. But in the years since, the National Trust has invaded. Like the British Empire of yore, they set up shop, imposed a £15/adult parking fee, which was the only way to get into the gift shop (like, really?), and threw up an immense building that blocked the view.
What the fuck, National Trust? Who are you serving with this?
The parking guard suggested we try the Causeway Bay Hotel, next door, which charged only £10/car and that provided you a £10 discount if you wanted to buy anything there. We managed to get the last free spot.
The walk down was crowded. The path is now paved (an electric shuttle bus ferries the paying guests), which felt like Disney had somehow whispered in someone’s ear. I will try to erase this part from my memory, sticking with the gravel path I recall from my first visit (which was also a nicer, sunnier day; today was rather overcast).
Hundreds of tourists. The landscape photographer in me was disappointed, getting people out of my shots was going to be impossible. I’ll absolutely need Lightroom’s features to remove the plethora of people from the beauty of the scenery.
Which, come of think of it, there wasn’t much “beauty”. When it’s sunny here, colour of the hexagonal stone really comes out. When it’s overcast, it’s much more … moody, almost melancholy. (And, frankly, when there’s a million people roaming around, it can be absolutely depressing.)
Choo Choo and I, however, got distracted with the tidal pools. The tide was well out at this point, and just to the west of the most famous part of Giant’s Causeway was a little maze of ponds filled with all sorts of interesting things. Choo Choo has explored such places many times before in her life.
We had to take our footings carefully, though. We didn’t exactly come down to explore wet, slimy places, so avoiding the things that would put us down onto hard and damp surfaces was important. Which is exactly what some poor older woman from Portugal (I think, I’m not the best to correctly identify Portuguese when it’s being yelled) slipped and landed on her back. Ai!
Monkey was enthralled with the Causeway, vanishing in to the crowds to take a few dozen photos. I milled around, trying to catch a few new angles, and avoid the throngs. Not so easy. Choo Choo’s illness took her down, though, and she ended up sitting with Alex while waiting for Monkey and I to finish. I eventually had to coax Monkey away.
We put our £10 to use at the Causeway Bay Hotel, getting crisps and something to drink. Then we started our trip southeasterly-ish.
Back in 2006, Alex and I stopped at Carrick-a-Rede, a bridge erected between the mainland and an island. We have a rather cute picture of Alex crossing it. We felt it would be fun to do that as the entire family.
But the National Trust had beaten us to it. Another £15/adult to park and no nearby hotel as an alternative. Sorry kids, an organization masquerading as a preservationist group has effectively denied entry. We drove to a lookout about a kilometer away to gaze longingly, instead.
Choo Choo was fading. Although we’d planned to do most of the coast on the way to Belfast, a more direct route was needed. From there, we headed to Ballycastle in search of lunch.
She stayed in the car when we arrived, curled up in the back to sleep. The rest of us trooped up to Ann Street to find The Bakery. No, really, that’s it’s name: The Bakery. As is usually the case, we have to go with what will work best for Alex. And one you’re travelling, the person with the dietary restrictions always wins. Not that I had any complaints about The Bakery – they had a pretty decent Irish stew. We got Choo Choo a takeaway toastie.
To no surprise, Alex wanted to get some geocaches as we headed south. I simply nodded as we drove along, right until she mentioned the word “train”. (If you’ve been reading this blog at all, you know it’s a Pavlovian response.) Better still, an abandoned train station with a tunnel. I MEAN, COME ON!
The Ballycastle Railway was one of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” plans to connect Ballycastle with the main railway at Ballymoney. It was never a profitable line and struggled right up until its closure in 1950. It’s been gone for so long that parts of it are hard to follow on satellite photos – railways tend to leave very visible scars.
But they also leave pretty cool artefacts. Like the bridge/tunnel in Capecastle, where the Islandarragh Road crosses over the former right-of-way. The railway cut is deep enough that a bridge was needed, but someone had the genius idea to make it a cut-and-cover tunnel, presumably as the soil had a habit of shifting. I can only assume that as the tunnel itself was flooded, suggesting a lot of ground water.
It’s only in hindsight that I realize that I don’t know if Northern Ireland has the same right-to-roam as other parts of the UK. I say that as I had to hop a stone wall to get down into the right-of-way. No-one else saw me, except for one confused cow.
The drive was easy. We stuck to the A roads, which then led to the Ms. (And if you’re keeping track, that’s A, L, M, and N roads that we’ve driven on this trip.) The M2 brought us into Belfast, upon which Google’s instructions got … hectic. This is in part to how the lanes divide out and at what point … and for some reason, “in two hundred metres” isn’t a consistent warning, and “keep left for M3” turns into “oh, I turn here” and suddenly I’m on a side street.
Fortunately, Google recalculates and after a bit of mucking about, we got back on the right route … for about a 100 metres, before Google took us off again. The “main” road to Newtownards – literally, Newtownards Road – isn’t the best route during rush hour, which we’d managed to arrive at the start of. Google, in its infinite wisdom, kept having me turn in bizarre directions with the intent of getting us to the hotel in the least direct way possible, which apparently was faster than the direct route.
I think.
To be honest, I’ve looked at the map several times since and I still makes no sense to me.
As it stands, I wasn’t prepared for the sudden appearance of the hotel (see aforementioned lack of “in 200 metres” warning) and we shot right past it. I had to turn at the hospital and come back. Fortunately, the parking lot wasn’t full, and it was easy to slip in.
Choo Choo went right to bed. There would be no dinner out for her. After relaxing for a bit, we walked from the hotel to the Bull & Claw, about a kilometre down Church Street/Regent Street/Frances Street (because why not change the name three times in a click?), across from the old Market House. I was disappointed to find that with such a great pub-sounding name, the Bull & Claw was not a pub.
We were the last to arrive. Although Jean had grandiose plans that we would all sit mixed, the families had accidentally colluded against to her to have us sit in our respective groups. The rest were family, however related. Jean, myself, and the other Minister (who’s name I’m drawing a blank on) were the only ones without a shared gene.
Allen made a speech, as expected. We tried to chat with others, but being at the end of a long table, it was difficult. And then the parade started.
Yes, a parade.
This was described as “unofficial” in a way that sounded like “you really shouldn’t be watching”. And if that sounds odd to you, welcome to the tension that is still very much present in Northern Ireland.
The Orangemen were celebrating. Well, to be specific, they were practising. Every year, on the 12 of July (literally called “The Twelfth”), they march to celebrate the victory of William III (aka “William of Orange”) over James the II and VII. Protestants defeated Catholics. They’ve been celebrating it for over 330 years.
Now far be it for me to bemoan anyone’s culture – celebrations are a huge part of cultures and they should be upheld whenever possible.
Except.
I say this as an outsider. I wasn’t raised in the Ulster culture. I only know of The Troubles from one previous visit to Ireland, some reading, a movie or two, and the music of U2 and The Cranberries. But as I watched the Orangemen march past the restaurant, I noticed that there were two real aspects to them: the pomp and circumstance of victory, and the two fingers in the air, bag of shite waved under the nose attitude. Particularly of the drummers who were hitting their chest-mounted basses so hard that there were clear dents in the faces.
This wasn’t about celebration. This was superiority.
And we wonder why these sorts of problems don’t go away. Humanity holds grudges far beyond what is reasonable. We cannot make peace because what we really want is to bury the other side and erase them from memory. We want to dominate. It really is a wonder, sometimes, that we’ve survived this long as a species.
We walked back to the hotel. I didn’t do any night photography.
