Giant’s Causeway, NORTHERN IRELAND - 01 september 2002
I figured Belfast would be a dead town as well on a Sunday and when I spotted a notice for a tour of the Giant’s Causeway posted at my hostel, I decided to join it.
The weather was excellent and we were first driven to a place with a rope bridge called Carrick-a-Rede. Hmmm… an example of how the authorities would and could milk tourist money out of a construction, which would have otherwise been an ordinary rope bridge across any other chasm.
Why did some fishermen sling a rope bridge across this chasm? To get to the other side. Ingenious. The road down to the bridge had spectacular coastal scenery, crashing waves, swooping seagulls and all. I registered that this was my first coastal scene since I started on my trip. Yeah, I had been meandering inland all this time, hadn’t I?
The bridge was not that scary but perhaps, someone with crossed eyes or was afraid of heights would shiver in fright and yelp for their boyfriends. This being Ireland, things would be fixed up with proper safety features (e.g. no fraying ropes and you could not put a hole through the boards like what usually happened to Indiana Jones) to ensure no tourists died. They, however, did not extend their guarantee to dogs. So, do not bring Rover along.
After an inexplicable stop at a castle, we finally arrived at the Giant’s Causeway. This unique and breathtaking structure had hexagonal-shaped rock columns packed tightly along a section of the coastline. The heights of the rock columns varied and looked like giant organ pipes or stepping stones. It was truly an incredible sight.
The story has it that Finn McCool, a giant warrior, fell in love with a giant babe, who lived on an island, and built this bridge to bring her across. Something like that, at least…
Or, you could believe the other hocus-pocus story that this structure was a mass of basalt columns formed from solidified lava. Bollocks, if you ask me.
I spent a long time at the edge, admiring the crashing waves on the unique rocks and contemplating the universe. Despite being swarmed with tourists, one could still find quiet spots to sit and stare. This place had the awesome energy to make one feel small and at peace.
I made my way to the top of the cliff for a bird’s eye view of the rock columns. The strong wind was howling away. A few times, I felt myself nearly blown off. Indeed, when I returned to the tourist centre, there was a sign saying that due to cross-winds, one should not take the cliff road today. Ooops. A bit too late for that.
Belfast, NORTHERN IRELAND to Carlingford, REP. OF IRELAND - 02 september 2002
Some semblance of life finally stirred in Belfast today, after two days of rest. The town actually looked quite pretty. There were some areas that seemed a little worn-down but still, I quite liked it here. I seriously had to ask Jane which buildings had been blown away before. I merrily hopped in and out of second-hand bookstores. Ah, scores of English books! Wonderful wonderful wonderful. I spent hours browsing in them.
By late afternoon, as agreed via emails with Jane, I took a bus down to Newry where she worked and waited for her until she knocked off from work at 5pm.
There, reunited again! We hugged. It was such a delight to see her again. We had really gotten along well during the three weeks in China. I had missed her very much.
She drove me down to the Republic of Ireland where she was living now. When we crossed the border, I did not notice… the price signs posted at the petrol stations were similar in numeric values, except that in Northern Ireland, the prices were in Pounds and in Republic of Ireland, they were in Euros.
After her China trip, Jane had rented a cottage in a charming little village called Carlingford right by a lough. We twisted and turned precariously up very narrow and steep stoned roads lined with rocky walls and finally stopped in front of her cottage.
OK, she had not had time to decorate the cottage to her own taste. So the cottage still retained the old-fashioned country-style atmosphere with pine-wood kitchen set, green-yellow checked curtains, velvet-upholstered sofa and ugly brown carpet. She was terribly embarrassed by the decorations.
I spied chili-light bulbs, fake fruits and plastic flamingos not yet set out in the garden and agreed. I thought these latter items belonged to the landlady as well but as it turned out, Jane later confessed they were hers. Gosh, she herself would have quite kitsch kitchen and garden too! Was she into gnomes as well? I feared.
The village was so tiny that for her postal address, it was just her name, the street name (and there was no road sign indicating this either… the locals just knew what the street was called), ‘Carlingford’, and ‘Ireland’. No street number or postal code. She had gone down to the post office and described where she lived and asked for a postal code. “Postal code? We don’t have that sort of thing here, love.”
Down by the harbour, some boys were plunging into the icy-cold water. “Now, boys, why do you do this?” A concerned Jane called out to them. “Good craic,” they brrred away. And here, I was introduced to an Irish word previously unbeknownst to me – ‘craic’ which means ‘fun’.
Jane wanted to introduce me to another typical Irish experience - the pub. Naturally, we had to head for some ‘good craic’ while in Carlingford. The pub was crowded, smoky and rowdy. A guy in Superman T-shirt was shouting over the counter. Ruddy-cheeked farmers and their wives sat in the corner, probably with visiting relatives, guffawed away. Lots of Irish slangs and ‘forf*#ksake’s were tossed around. Many half-pissed and very happy Carlingforders boozed away. The ‘traditional’ music, as advertised, did not turn out to be the fiddler-Riverdance-sort. It was just Irish songs sung with electric guitars plugged into amplifiers.
I was standing next to a typical, rotund Irish bloke with a crew-cut. He spoke with a huge accent and an unfortunate lisp. On learning that I just arrived from Belfast today, he immediately congratulated me for surviving it without being bombed away. He kept going ‘Woah woah’ about the recent gaellic football matches. Nope, between the mêlée created from the music, the people in the pub, his lisp and his accent, I did not understand what he was talking about half the time. Still, I put up a good bimbo show by merely smiling and nodding away.
Carlingford, REP. OF IRELAND - 03 september 2002
I woke up late. Jane had to work. She could not take time off as she had just started on this job. No problem. I pottered around the kitchen, doing the dishes and laundry – ah, country-living. In a week, one might find me making my own bread and jam. Nah… Maybe one might find Jane making her own bread and jam in a couple of years’ time.
The weather was splendid but I was very lazy and merely lounged around, reading books I dug out from Jane’s yet- unpacked boxes.
When I finally decided to head out for a walk, using a guide that Jane had given me, the sky had turned cloudy. A pity.
As I meandered up and along the country roads, I really admired the beautiful homesteads and gardens these Irish proud home-owners lived in. The houses were all perfectly painted. The gardens were taken care of immaculately. Multi-coloured flowers bloomed in every charming garden. Some had pairs of stone eagles standing in the gardens. They seemed to like to set eagles in their gardens, I did not know why but I had already noticed 5 or 6 pairs. Instead of flower-beds outside windows that I saw quite often in Austria, here, they hung lovely flower baskets near the top of their doors. I noticed a family actually left their key in the key-hole of their front door. How trusting.
I was greeted by friendly Irish folks who strolled by. An elderly man even stopped his car to wish me a pleasant walk up in the mountains. Gosh, these people were really friendly.
According to the guide, I had to turn right after I came upon ‘a stone cottage with evergreen trees’. Indeed, I came upon what appeared to be a stone cottage. But the owner had recently chopped down his trees, I supposed, as I could only see the stumps now. This guide was printed probably ten years ago. Still, with descriptions like this, it was amazing how accurate the rest stayed.
That night, it was nippy (Irish/English for ‘cold’) in the cottage. Jane tried to start the fire in her fire-place. Believe it or not, if the fire really got started, it would be my first fire in a fire-place. But she did not manage to start it. She blamed the coal and the old-fashioned fire-place. Of course.
Carlingford, REP. OF IRELAND to NEWCASTLE, NORTHERN IRELAND - 04 september 2002
Unlike yesterday morning, this morning was foggy. I tried a different route suggested in the guide and walked through ‘ferny paths’and opened ‘a wooden gate’ and went up the slope to the ‘slate rocks’. I tried to be creative and used different routes but all led to nothing except thorny bushes. I pricked myself several times. So, I obediently stayed on the suggested path.
I reached the pass and like all passes, it was windy and freezing cold. There was a big rock there, so I lay there and closed my eyes. The cloud had started to close in on the peak of the mountain called Slieve Fog. It was wonderful up here, especially alone. The mountain, the wild flowers like heather and gorse, the wind, the view of lough and the village, ah…
Before frostbite set in, I opened my eyes, took one last sweeping look around and headed down. Such was my luck that by the time I returned to the cottage, the sky had turned bright blue and sunny, the mountain peak showed its glory, and birds started to chirp.
Jane managed to escape from her office earlier today. She drove me up through the Mourne Mountains opposite the lough all the way to Newcastle, a typical Irish coastal resort.
Along the way, we stopped by a park which had a dam and a reservoir. We took a walk through the paths and woods and came upon a freshly-cut grassy slope near the dam.
Being the mature women that we are, when faced with a grassy slope, we knew we had to do something - roll down the slope. Jane took off her jacket and went down first. I placed my arms across my chest, Egyptian-mummy style and rolled down next. I did a better job than her. I changed directions mid-way and more than doubled her distance before I came to a frantic, dizzy stop.
At Newcastle, she explained that typical Irish vacations were spent in tacky coastal towns such as this, with their grannies and embarrassing family members. She showed me an arcade games gallery which was essential to coastal resorts in case of bad weather, such was the unpredictability of Irish weather. We even found a traditional old-fashioned 1970s-style chippie and ordered fish (cod or plaice, love?) and chips.
NEWGRANGE, REP. OF IRELAND - 05 september 2002
I read about a nearby sight called Newgrange and decided to loosen my lazy bones and venture out in Ireland on my own today.
I caught the bus from Newry to Drogheda. From the bus window, I knew I was already in Drogheda and waited for the driver to stop by the bus-station. But the driver kept spinning around town and when we were back on the highway, I knew something was wrong. In answer to my query, he explained that I should have told him to stop at the bus station. Well, I was actually waiting for him to stop there as I figured he would have passengers to pick up. Now, he could not stop until he got to a bus-stop further out on the highway. He suggested that I try and catch a bus back to Drogheda.
I waited patiently for 10 seconds at the bus-stop and spotted no bus. I wrote ‘NEWGRANGE’ on a piece of paper and held it out, hoping some tourists in camper-vans were heading the same way. Almost immediately, an elderly gentleman stopped and asked me to hop in. He apologized to me that he was not going to Newgrange but he drove me back to Drogheda, right to the bus station. Terribly sweet of him. I caught a bus to Newgrange right away.
There were many Megalithic Passage Tombs here in the Boyne Valley. The two main ones here were Newgrange and Knowth. Both required different admission fees. The sights were very properly restored, almost too restored. And as there were no records, the megalithic art was never deciphered. The guides kept saying your guess was as good as mine. Built by Neolithic communities 5000 years ago, they were even older than the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.
If I had gone to one and not the other, I would have been disappointed. Both had something to offer that the other did not. At Knowth, the stone-art on the stones at the bottom of the passage tomb mound were varied and interesting but one could not visit the interior of the passage tomb. At Newgrange, there was only one stone with artwork but one could enter the passage tomb. The authorities had artificially simulated the sun-rise on Winter Solstice which would illuminate the passage tomb for 17 minutes. Intriguing.
Carlingford, REP. OF IRELAND to Belfast, NORTHERN IRELAND - 06 september 2002
I had yet another day to potter around the cottage and go for mountain walks. This was the year of living differently. How else could I live like a country girl?
I made a 4-hour walk around the mountains, woods and country roads today. Greeted ‘Hiya’ to ruddy-cheeked, missing-a-tooth farmers and home-owners lounging in their gardens or porches. Exchanged a few mumbles with hunky construction workers fixing windows, fences, whatever. Waved to drivers who passed by in their cars.
During the walk, the sky alternated between rainy and sunshine-blue at least three times. Towards the end when I was heading back, the sky really opened up and poured. I was soaked to the skin. I had thought I would be walking in the heavy rain until I reached the doorstep of the cottage. But nope, by the time I got to the steep mountain road leading to the cottage, birds were chirping and the sky was cobalt blue again. Strange Irish weather.
I had a bus-cum-ferry-cum-bus trip tomorrow to Manchester, leaving at 6:45am from Belfast. Jane made arrangements with her friend in Belfast so that we could spend the night at her flat there.
When we arrived at Belfast, Jane decided to make a spin around the Protestant area to show me how the Protestants had painted the sides of the pavements ‘blue’, ‘white’ and ‘red’ - British colours - and how they waved British flags from their windows. We stopped by a mural showing King Billy in triumphant glory, with a dying, bleeding Catholic by the bottom. Some kids were playing in that area. Jane quickly drove away, fearing they might stone her. Then, we passed by some men in brass-band uniforms. I normally would think these were just guys getting ready for a band practice. But Jane explained that they were getting ready for an anti-Catholic march down the streets. She panicked further and nervously drove off.
Later, when she thought the coast was clear, we returned to the King Billy mural and I sneaked out to take a picture. Just then, some kids came by. To take control of the situation, Jane called out to them, “Kids, do you want to have your photos taken?” “Aye!!!” They ran forward eagerly and stood proudly in front of the mural, MARCHING on the spot. I snapped a frame furtively and we left. We were miraculously not stoned.
Jane’s friend, Roisin, had gotten a fire going at her fire-place and so NOW was my first fire ever at a fire-place. She was also the hostess-mostest, lighting candles around the house, making a wonderful pasta dinner and rounding it off with a delicious apple pie dessert.
Belfast, NORTHERN IRELAND to Manchester, UNITED KINGDOM - 07 september 2002
I was placed in the attic for the night. I opened my eyes and stared at the sky-light. It was already light-blue. I continued to admire the sky sleepily. Then, out of curiosity, I decided to check the time.
My alarm clock read 6:05am. Huh?? I had set the alarm to ring at 6:00am. But it did not ring. I just happened to wake up and happened to check the time. I double-checked the clock and to my horrors, I had set it for 6:00pm! Sheesh… I was usually more sensible. In a way, how lucky I was!
A very groggy Jane put me on the bus and waved me goodbye. I transferred to a huge ferry for the ride across the Irish channel to Scotland.
There, I travelled south to Manchester. I was to visit another friend, Gisela, there. When I arrived, she was there at the bus station to meet me. She introduced me to her boyfriend, Lee, who looked a tad younger than her. I figured he was perhaps 24 or 25 years old. He was a dead-ringer for Tintin, with the curly hair in front and the mouth twisted to the side.
Back at the flat, I was introduced to her flatmate Manesh who was of Indian nationality and who was busy watching the most exciting TV programme ever - cricket.
We headed out for Indian curry that night. Due to the cosmopolitan culture of United Kingdom, one could get rather good curry here. I enjoyed the familiar smell and taste very much. Yeah, I really missed spicy food from home.
During dinner, Gisela and Lee kept making goo-goo eyes at each other, snogged endlessly and kept conversations to themselves. I believed Manesh felt a bit embarrassed by them ignoring me and made valiant efforts to converse with me. It was very nice of him. Somewhere in the conversation when the lovey-dovey couple was briefly interested to join in, I found Lee to be just 19 years old. That was a whole 9 years younger than Gisela. Gee… the age gap was a little large, I thought.
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