Taking the Long Way

After a hearty Irish breakfast of sausages, egg, and soda bread, we left our hotel to begin our road trip. Our first stop was a district of Belfast that was/is a border between catholic/protestant neighborhoods. There are large “peace” walls that have been erected with the intention of keeping these communities from fighting each other. While, passage between them is much more fluid today post-“Troubles,” the walls still stand as a reminder of the violent fighting that once occurred and crippled this city. While peace exists today, the walls have been covered with murals that are heavily political in nature. We parked our car on a residential street on one side of the wall. The first murals commemorated past Irish battles for independence. Others depicted various left-leaning political leaders. Another voiced its support for Palestine against the Israeli occupation. Eventually we reached some large metal gates. They were now open to allow smooth passage between the two neighborhoods, but the murals changed pretty drastically. Without knowing anything about these two communities or which was which, I had no difficulty in determining who was unionist and who was loyalist. The new set of murals commemorated past British military officers, voiced solidarity with Israel, and had a panel about Irish volunteers who fought in the Battle of Britain. It was interesting to see this little piece of history. The first of the “peace” walls was dismantled and removed just recently, and the others are slated to follow in the couple years. While this is kind of seen as a way toward progress, I would suggest the city retain at least one of the walls as a sort of memorial of what happened — much like the Berlin Wall is today.  

 After the walls, we drove to the port area to check out the Titanic Museum. It is a very modern structure built on the site that built the Titanic back in the day. It focused on the time period in which it was built, the construction, and of course the sinking. It was very crowded, and I found myself bypassing entire exhibits just because I felt like I was getting penned in by the masses of people. It was a very elaborate space, however, that even included a sit-down Disneyland-like ride at one point that went through an early 20th century Belfast shipyard that ended with narration talking about (and I’m not making this up) all the dock workers going to the pub after the launch of the ship. We walked outside the museum, only briefly, to check out the dock area, but the wind was quite biting even though the sun was surprisingly out.  

 From Belfast, we elected to take the coastal route instead of the most direct roads to continue our drive north. I had planned to make a brief stop in Carrickfergus, but in the short time it took us to drive there, it had started raining quite hard. We stopped in a car park for a spell thinking that the rain might stop, but it was clear that this was not going to happen. We decided to keep driving north. After 90 mins or so, we stopped at Tor Head, the closest point to Scotland, at only 12 miles away. There was a trail that led up to an old observation station, but as it had been raining, we elected not to take the muddy trail. The sun was now poking out again, and lit up the nearby fields and sheep. The roads we had been driving on were very narrow. Fortunately, there were very few vehicles we encountered as the space was very rarely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other at the same time.

   From Tor Head, we continued to Carrick-a-Rede, where we hiked for 1km along the cliffs until we reached a rope bridge that was strung over the water to a nearby island. For £9, you could cross the bridge. I was willing to do this, but the ticket booth had stopped selling as it was later in the day and the two National Trust employees working the bridge had “closing time” on their mind and weren’t keen on letting me cross. Just as well. I saved my money, and I mostly just wanted pictures anyway. The problem with taking pictures, however, was that I couldn’t manipulate the camera buttons without removing my gloves and the biting wind was wreaking havoc on my fingers. It was a relief to get back in our small Toyota hatchback which retained a little bit of heat.  

 We spent the rest of the evening at Bushmill’s Inn, a 400 year old building converted into a restaurant and inn. Nicole and I had beef and guinness pies with (naturally) Irish brews to wash it down. It is a very relaxing place. They lit fires to aid in keeping people warm and we did our best to thaw out from the chilly weather.