A visit to the NORTH

So if you live in the Republic of Ireland and plan to go to Northern Ireland, it would be too much to say that you are going to Northern Ireland.  You'd just say, "I'm going to the NORTH."  Likewise, it you lived in Belfast and you're heading down to Dublin, you'd just say, "I'm going to the SOUTH."  I'm not sure why they capitalize it, but as you see here, they do.

It was a bank holiday weekend and since we'd spent last St. Patrick's Day in Dublin, we decided to move out a bit and spend the long weekend in an area that we hadn't made it to.  Actually, that's a bit of a lie, as EVERYONE in the family, except me, had been to Belfast one or more times.  I think Martha had made 3 or 4 visits up with school field trips and jaunts with her friends.

We left Saturday morning.  It's about a 2 hour drive to Belfast with good road.  Our destination was a bit further NORTH to Portrush.  This town is lot like other coast towns I've seen in various places in the states.  Think Seaside, Oregon or Door County, Wisconsin or Traverse City, Michigan.  Very focused on the tourists.  The tourist season doesn't start in the NORTH for a bit, so it was still quiet.  Our hotel, I was told, is only open on weekends for a few more weeks.  It took about 10 minutes for the hot water to make it up to the shower this morning.  For some reason, although the hotel was nearly empty, they decided we must be  placed on the 3rd floor of the 3 floor hotel.  They must have seen the rowdy kids piling out of the people mover (read:  minivan) after 4 hours on the road.  Nice place, however, so other complaints.

The weather was shockingly so so when we arrived, so we decided that we must take advantage of this good fortune and head for our first destination:  The Giant's Causeway.  The Causeway is a geologic wonder.  I, honestly, was expecting something of greater scale and I hadn't read up too much on it, but it was pretty cool.  I guess  you could think of it as Northern Ireland's Grand Canyon.  It is comprised of about 40,000 interlocked stones, so it's a bit of God's tiling with volcanic activity.


It is a couple of long walks there and back.  There was a bus, but we didn't need no stinkin' bus.  Not sure if this was a direct quote of mine, but it certainly was in my thoughts.  The 1 pound fee/person for the bus certainly got my inner Scrooge going.  So we made the 15-20 minute walk along the ridge and got to the 162 stair decent.  Now these stairs weren't exactly built to exacting specifications and code and it was a rather uncomfortable walk down, but certainly worth saving the 5 quid.

There's the geologist's explanation of why this natural wonder is there and then there the story of the two giants.  I'll let you peruse the Internet to see which explanation you like better.

J.J. and Grace on the edge

One of our favorite things about Ireland is being able to walk up to a very large cliff and not have guardrails.  I think the Irish legal system recognizes that people that fall off of cliffs are likely inebriated or on to a better gig, therefore, suing for compensation is not something that seems to happen.  This picture was one I took, but Martha was right behind the kids and had no idea that there was this dropoff.  As a matter of fact, on the other side of these guys at this moment was a guy that had fallen (probably only 10 feet) off the other side and there was a crew of rescue folks with stretchers/neck braces/ambulances... They hauled him off just as we left.

The rocks are being constantly washed over, so they are VERY slippery. Especially as  you head further out to the point.  I had a very hard time convincing Rod to head down closer to the water for a picture as I thought it would be cool to have the waves washing behind him.  He agreed with some suspicion and I got the shot.  He came back and we continued to walk further out.  It started to get crazy slippery, so I headed back.  About two seconds after that, a wave bigger than we had seen to that point broke over the rocks and poor Rod had no chance. Soaked to the knees.  If it would have happened about 3 minutes earlier, he had a party to blame.  Unfortunately for him (and probably for us), he had no one but himself at that time.  His demand for bus fare for the ride up was met, but it was a lonely ride and we all made it back to the top before he did.

Day Two was to be packed by a few smaller attractions.  The first was Dunluce Castle.  This castle was built in the early 1500's and abandoned in the late 1600's after McQuillan's beat the MacDonnells or the other way around.  This was a prequel to the Hatfield and McCoy feuds to occur later in America.  This castle's biggest claim to fame was being in Led Zepplin's Houses of the Holy album cover, along with the Giant's Causeway stones.

The most amazing thing we saw was a bright blue color straight over our heads and a blinding light that caused us to avert our gaze.  This was something we hadn't seen in a long time in Ireland.  In fact, it was so clear that we could see Scotland.

The weather was a bit brisk, so we ended up in the tea room for a spot of tea and hot chocolate before we warmed up for our next visit.

Carrick-A-Rede is a wee town up the road from Dunluce Castle.  It was a thriving fishing town, but fell on hard times.  With the rocks and cliff and no good harbor, it was probably a tough place to get a boat in the water, so these guys used a little rock islands just about 60 feet from the mainland to stage their boats and nets.  But how to span the gap?  Why a rope-bridge, of course!!  Now they haven't fished from here for decades, but when your main industry dries up, it's time to find another.  We were told the ropes were changed regularly and it wasn't nearly as scary as Martha thought it was going to be.  That was until she let Rod go first and he began to bounce and shake as the rest were coming across.  It's all good fun until someone falls 75 feet to their death on the rocks and surf below.  Luckily it was all good fun.

The weather was continuing to hold out as we made our way to the last destination of the day.  Weather, however, didn't matter for this visit.  This was going to be a purely indoor event with plenty of heat.  Yes, it was time for a whiskey tour.  We still hadn't made it to our famous distillery in the SOUTH (Jameson's, just north of the Liffey in Dublin).  But how can you drive through the town of Bushmills multiple times and not stop?  From the size of the parking lot and the facilities for large coaches, this is one busy place during the season.  For us, it was pretty quiet.  The kids now know how to distill spirits and after watching a few seasons of MASH are now ready to try some of their own.  They didn't allow us to take any pictures on the tour.  They said it was for safety, but I think it was because they didn't want anyone to take pictures of the Jameson's bottles in their bottling facility.  Yes, you read that right.  There were a bunch of Jameson's bottles clearly visible on the line.  Turns out that Bushmills was sold to the man a few years ago (Diagio's).  Before that, Bushmills and Jameson's were owned by the same company (Irish Distillers).  So they bottled it all in Bushmills.  Since they had some type of long-term contract, they still bring the Jameson's up to Bushmills via tanker truck (that's what the tour guide said) and bottle on one of the lines.  This, frankly, took a little of the romance out of whisky manufacturing for me, but I also thought of the great news story it would be if a truck somehow managed to get lost or in an accident on the way to the NORTH and all the good Irish jokes it would generate...  The kids did not really like the smell of anything here, but Rod really wanted me to buy him a bottle of 21-year old Bushmills that would be bequeathed to him on his 21st birthday.  I settled for a 16-year old and I'll give him a shot then.  Just kidding about giving him a shot.

This day was St. Patrick's Day, but in the NORTH, I saw NOTHING other than one lady at Dunluce Castle that had shamrock stockings on.  This holiday definitely is not one that unites the NORTH and the SOUTH in Ireland.

Our last day was today and we took the coast road down from Portrush to Belfast.  The weather had turned to crap and it was good thing we were planning for a long drive and an indoor museum.  The destination was the Titanic Museum in Belfast.  A very cool place this was.  It was a great history lesson on Belfast and very well put together.  It took a few hours to get through and we again forgot to feed our children before embarking, so by the time food came around, they were pretty cranky, which led to cranky parents.  A rookie mistake that I'm sure we'll do again.

But I've found my comeback when I hear my very fortunate children complain about their lot in life.

"You know, things could be worse.  You could be a rivet catcher in the shipyard."

During the Titanic visit, they showed how the ship was built.  There were no fully-automatic rivet machines.  So there was a crew of 5 (yes, five) people on a rivet team.

1. Heater
2. Catcher
3. Bucker
4. Right-hand hammer
5. Left-hand hammer

In the dry dock where Titanic was built.

A shipyard worker in those days was not especially rewarding work and it was hard.  Rivets were put in a furnace and heated till red hot, then thrown to the catcher, who would take the rivet and put it in the hole.  The bucker would hold it in the hole from one side and two guys would beat it from the other side in quick secession, in tight quarters.  Hence the need for a right and left handed hammerer. The heater and catcher were often boys as child labor was pretty common.  They also discussed the religious aspects of employment and Catholics were not exactly on the fast track in any career at the shipyard.  So if you started off as a heater/catcher, the best you could hope for would be a position about 10 feet away as a hammerer.

After the Titanic, the two hour ride to collect Radley and get home went pretty quickly.  We're all back in our routines tomorrow.

We're going to head out next week to Germany to visit my exchange sister and her family and do a little travelling on the kid's Easter break.  Stay tuned.