Belfast & Beyond

Friday 30 September

Up early and set off to book in for our P&O ferry crossing from Cairnryan to Larne in the North of Ireland. Our plan is to send about three weeks travelling around the island of Ireland, starting with Northern Ireland, and then the Republic of Ireland, travelling anti-clockwise from Belfast to Dublin.

Even though we crossed so many borders in Europe, this was the first time our motor home was inspected by customs and security staff – underneath with a mirror, inside the living area and inside the garage. Obviously they were checking for excess alcohol, cigarettes and the like but we're sure also for more sinister things too.

The 2 hour crossing was quite pleasant and uneventful on the P&O European Causeway - we even had some sun until the ferry docked.  We then set off towards Antrim, a half hour away, to our camp site – Six Mile Water Caravan Park. This site is a half hour's train ride to Belfast which we'll do tomorrow but for now we visit the town a short walk away.

To get there we walk through what was centuries ago the grounds of the Antrim Castle (1861) where only a tower remains after the castle was destroyed in 1922 when a fire broke out during a gala ball. There is some restoration work going on in the area so there is a lot of bog due to the rains as well.

Antrim seems a nice little town though the local shopping centre is a bit ho hum with lots of low price shops. There are several churches of various denominations and 3 funeral parlours within a very short distance of each other.

Lucky we went for this exploratory walk as it took us longer then planned to find the railway station and tomorrow the trains only come every 2 hours, so if we miss the 9:27am train we would not be happy.

Saturday 01 October

Surprisingly, Bill can find very little tourist friendly information on Google relating to Belfast. For instance he couldn't see the train stations so we weren't sure where to get off – as usual Central Station is not in the centre of the city. So we took the advice of a grandfather on a day trip with his grandson to visit the museum and got off when he did.

Turns out there is a HOHO and we're glad for it because the attractions are very widely spread out. Plus it was live commentary with a very witty Belfast born lady.

Firstly the Titanic Quarter which once housed a very productive ship building area and of course where the infamous ship was built. At the peak, Belfast employed 35,000 men in the ship building industry. The area has been recently revived with the construction of many apartment buildings and will come back into it's own in 2012 when the new Titanic Exhibit opens to mark the 100 year anniversary of its construction. The building is in the shape of a star – the White Star Line built the Titanic – but also has aspects of the bow of a ship and will contain interactive displays, a dining room resembling that of the original on the ship and much memorabilia.

Belfast is very proud of the fact that the ship “was ok when it left here” and looks forward to this exhibit once again livening up this docks area.

As we approached East Belfast, our guide started telling us about the outbreak of The Troubles in 1969. We were told the Troubles weren't about religion but politically motivated. The Unionists wanted to remain under British rule and the Nationalist wanted independence. But the majority of Unionists were Protestant and the Nationalists Catholic, so it was obviously a religious fight too.

We drove through a rather posh housing area where judges and lawyers lived under 24 hour security for fear of being bombed. Not far from this is the beautiful and highly guarded Parliament Building at Stormont. Completed in 1932 it was the seat of power for Northern Ireland for 40 years. It is almost laughable that in May 2007, two men who had fought in opposite camps for decades, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, were sworn in as first minister and deputy. The building is completely white so during World War II it was darkened by using coal and manure so the German bombers wouldn't know how close they were to the city, because apparently Belfast was the second most bombed city during that war.

The horror tour continued as we came to Falls and Shankill Roads where several buildings and walls are covered in artistic murals relating to the Troubles. 24 “Peace Walls” were erected to separate both sides and try to prevent missiles of all description from being hurled at each other. Totally crazy and amazingly, the 24^th Wall was only erected last year, so the animosity obviously continues today. Just like the Berlin Wall, there used to be guarded check points into the city centre where everyone entering had to be body searched and bags xrayed. After hearing a disturbing news item about a suspicious package being found near the city yesterday, we kinda wish the searches continued today.

After all that doom and gloom, it was nice to drive past the gorgeous Queen's University where C.S Lewis, the author of The Witch, the Lionand the Wardrobe (published 1950) was educated. Here you can explore the room dedicated to The Chronicles of Narnia before taking the path to the Ulster Museum and Botanic Gardens next door.

A gentleman on the tour told us we should check out the Merchant Hotel which serves delicious high teas in the foyer, so once off the HOHO we went for a look. It was once the headquarters of the Ulster Bank (1858) and is heritage listed. The exterior is magnificent but the interior is out of this world. The gold, the detail, the gorgeous furnishings. It's almost like a palace and holds the Guinness Book of Records for making the most expensive cocktail in the world.

After that, we made our way to the Belfast Cathedral, which now has the Spire of Hope protruding 40 metres into the sky, and which descends through the ceiling above the choir stalls - it was added as part of a redevelopment of the Cathedral Quarter in 2007, and is illuminated at night to great effect.

The other feature of the Cathedral is the extraordinary colored glass tile mosaics that took two sisters 7 years to create.

We then moved on to check out the Belfast City Hall, the Belfast Opera House, and the Europa Hotel, which has the dubious unoffical title of the most bombed hotel in the world, suffering 28 bomb attacks during the troubles. 

Finally, we just had to have a drink at the famous Crown Liquor Saloon (1885). Legend has it that the publican, Patrick Flanagan, a Catholic wanted to give it another name but his wife, a Protestant wanted the Crown in honour of the British monarchy. She won but he got his own back by placing a tiled floor mosaic of a crown at the entrance where customers would walk on it everyday. 

The interior has loads of stained and cut glass, mirrors and mahogany and cute wooden “snugs” in which groups of about 10 can close themselves away for private gatherings. These have 4 gunmetal plates fixed to the panels for striking matches (when smoking was permitted) and a call button for reordering drinks without having to get up (those don't work anymore). It's a fairly small place but cosy and very popular with locals and tourists alike, and is now owned and run by the National Trust.

It is true that the Guinness in Ireland tastes so much better then what we are served in Australia.  By then it was time to catch the train home and we probably won't return tomorrow as the trains only come every 3 hours and nothing opens until around 1pm anyway.

Sunday 02 October

Happy birthday to Sylvi's brother Robert and her girlfriend Fiona. Cold and overcast but not raining. We watched Ireland beat Italy in the rugby and caught up on which teams had been victorious back home in the AFL and NRL. The rest of the morning we slopped around and Sylvi was once again frustrated with the laundry facilities.

We had lunch at the local cafe overlooking the Lough Neagh (lake) where the Maid of Antrim (1963) comes and goes several times taking guests for a Sunday afternoon cruise. Afterwards a short stroll along a trail around the Lough proved too boggy so we headed back into Antrim town for a bit more of a look around. What we did notice was the terrible amount of litter not only along the trail but also in the Lough. There is a 100 pound fine for littering but this doesn't seem to have deterred people which is a shame as it looks terrible.

It ended up being quite a long walk which included a visit to the RoundTower (10^th century) the only thing remaining of a monastic settlement, the Witch's Stone (lots of belief in witches, fairies and giants in these parts), the Barbican Gate which was once the main entrance to the Castle, the Old Courthouse (now council building and Information Centre) and back to the Castle Gardens where there is also a small burial ground for the Massereene and Ferrard family who occupied the Castle between 1610 and 1922.

We've walked through these gardens on several occasions now and each time Sylvi has been fascinated by what might be going on behind some scaffolding where only the tops of an old building can be seen. It turns out this old building is Clotworthy House (1840) the once coach house and stables of the Castle. There is much renovation and addition going on to attract more tourists to this town.

Belfast was enjoyable, and the City is clearly trying hard to catch up on it's development after the 30 years of Troubles, but the impact of the troubles is still evident in pockets of the society, as evidenced by the reactions in the papers to Martin McGuinness nominating for President in the elections to be held at the end of October, the attempt to set off a bomb in downtown Belfast while we were there, and the ongoing need to continue to build so-called peace walls in the trouble areas - walls that make the Berlin Wall look like a picket fence.  Hopefully the progress continues aplenty.

More photos here.