Pt3- 18:

Glenariffe is one of the nine glens of Antrim, or niyan gleeanns as the locals would say. Apart from the Giant’s Causeway they are Northern Ireland’s premier natural landmarks. I stationed myself here because it’s within easy reach of Belfast and it offers a handy base to explore inland. And it’s bloody beautiful in the classic meaning of the word. While Scotland’s immense, rugged, desolate and imposing landscapes are spectacular, they are beautiful only in the sense they inspire awe; great places to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. In contrast, if I won Lotto tomorrow I’d add a holiday retreat in Glenariffe to the shopping list, right after the private jet, the Mediterranean island and my very own Guinness brewery.

The scenic trail through the scenic glen is extremely scenic, with lots of fetching scenery. I worked up a thirst with a brisk hike around the ten kilometre circuit, which at first followed a forest path down to the confluence of the Inver and Glenariffe Rivers burbling happily along the valley floor. The track traced the Glenariffe past rushing waterfalls and shallow rapids. I crossed a narrow footbridge and steadily climbed the opposite slope to the highest point of the trail. The panorama took in the length of the green glen right down to the distant Irish Sea. I sucked in lungsful of clean crisp air and set off for the last leg of the walk down into the valley again, this time beside the Inver and back up to close the circuit at the top. Bugger me if it wasn’t right on beer o’clock when I stepped into the carpark! Fortunately the Manor House pub is nearby; it might be the atmospheric equivalent of the hole in the ozone layer but the place serves a succulent draft Guinness.

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The plan was to follow the coast right around the Emerald Isle so from Glenariffe I pointed the bullet north on the A2, destination Londonderry. It hadn’t rained since Belfast and there was a feeling that real seasonal change was in the air. The Antrim coastline looked its very best under luminous blue skies thinly smudged with high cloud. A succession of low rounded green headlands separating comely little bays rolled by on my right while green farmland crisscrossed higgledy piggledy with hip-high dry-stone fences stretched away on the left. Here and there tiny islands, or skerries, appeared just offshore, each topped with a carpet of green grass you’d swear was newly mown. It was all very…green. I’m not sure if it was due to the weather or the scenery or both, but after their severe denting in Belfast I felt my spirits lift with each passing kilometre.

Apparently bally means “place of” in Gaelic, which explains why every second settlement is Ballysomething: Ballymena, Ballymoney, Ballyronan, Ballypatrick, Ballycastle, Ballyvoy…I passed through so many ballys on the way to the Giant’s Causeway I lost count. It was still only mid-morning when I pulled up in the carpark above the causeway. I could have taken the easy way down and marched straight along the road to the causeway itself, but I chose instead to tackle the looping pathway along the top of the 100 meter cliffs and down along the face to the feature called The Organ, which is not what you might think it is, then back along the seafront to the causeway itself. I bought a ticket from a beaming gentleman who sang as he worked. Me: “Beautiful day for singing”, He: “Every day’s a good day for singing!”

The path along the brow of the cliff was narrow and steep, the steps of rock set in concrete firm but in places uneven. The Organ is a series of vertical stone pipes embedded in the cliff face which rise many meters above the path. They’re a foretaste of the causeway itself, a remarkable formation of regular, mostly hexagonal pillars. The interlocking basalt columns are cracked into evenly sized stones so each column appears manufactured. According to the pamphlet there are about forty thousand of them rising out of the sea. Legend has it that Finn MacCool, the giant of Gaelic mythology, strode the causeway to battle the Scottish giant Benandonner. Trust the Irish to come up with a hero called MacCool.

By rights I should have been stuffed by the time I hauled myself back up to the car, but the quiet exhilaration I’d been feeling since I set out this morning carried me through any mild weariness. I followed the A2 past the precariously picturesque ruins of Dunluce Castle, through the towns of Portrush and Portstewart and Coleraine and out to Magilligan Strand. One of the many surprises Ireland had in store, Magilligan is a wide, flat and hard stretch of sand several kilometres long. Not quite as white as the sands of Esperance back home, it was nevertheless the nearest I’ve come to a real beach on the whole journey. I was so excited I drove straight out onto the sand, turned left and travelled a kilometre before turning round and wheeling two kilometres in the opposite direction. Eventually I pulled up right at the water’s edge, got out and, not for the first or last time in Ireland, drew deeply on the clean fresh air. If this is the real Ireland, I won’t be able to get enough of it no matter how long I stay.

I swerved off the A2 again at a sign which read Martello Tower. Apart from Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour I’ve never seen a Martello tower, though the famous one at Sandycove is high on my list of priorities in Dublin. Round, squat and robust they’re a sort of mini fortress which popped up like pimples all over the British Isles and, a sort of imperial acne, wherever else the British infested the planet including North America, India, South Africa and, yes, Australia. Unfortunately this one was locked up so I couldn’t poke around inside.

I got lost in Derry trying to find the B&B and ended up in the Republic of Ireland on the road to Letterkenny. There’s something Irish about the fact that the only person I came across to ask directions was deaf. I followed my nose back towards Derry along narrow lanes running between shoulder high hedges. As I crested a rise I came grille to grille with another car roaring up the opposite side. The driver veered around me, clipping my wing mirror in the process. We both pulled over and got out. The driver was just a kid, barely old enough for a license, and the car was full of skinheads. I was half expecting a bit of bovver but the kid was all grovelling apologies. We checked out the cracked mirror together and after a friendly little chat I decided it wasn’t worth calling the cops. The hire insurance would cover it anyway, so no skin off mine, and I wasn’t in the mood for hanging around. The kid was deeply relieved and I felt good about it, so everybody’s happy.

I checked into Braehead B&B, a farmhouse ten minutes out of town, and went to find a pub. I didn’t have to look too hard, every second place in Derry is a pub – I liked this town straight away.

I kicked off a day in Derry with visit to the rightly celebrated Tower Museum, which took me on a labyrinthine journey through the colourful history of this pretty town. It’s a triumph of spatial organisation that kept me engaged for ages. Out on the street again I sensed a positive energy, even playfulness, about Derry, a welcome surprise after the paranoia and desperation of Belfast. There’s a refreshing pride and optimism which comes across in the openness and friendliness of everyone on the street. It was all smiles. Even the inevitable murals seem more like entertainment than breast beating and form an integral part of the mainstream artistic landscape. The Bogside is as much urban art gallery as Catholic enclave.  Perhaps I’m seeing all this because the sun’s out and it’s warm enough to wander around in shorts and tee shirt.

The walls of the old town are wide enough to drive a car along and offer another perspective on the clean, compact CBD. They also afford great views of the colourful boats bobbling lazily on the silken surface of the River Foyle. It was all so gentle and charming I fell to thinking about the essential contradictions and paradoxes of the Irish character, at least the Northern species. Finer minds than mine have wrestled with the complexities of the Troubles, but the question that kept on asking itself is how a fundamentally gentle race can be so corrupted into such violence by politics and religion? Of course, it’s not a question at all because both politics and religion are about power pure and simple, and where there’s power there’s abuse of power; what’s the saying: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely? Politics and religion are the refuges of scoundrels, parasites, hypocrites and narcissists; any deluded altruists are soon chewed up and spat out. Ireland may be too beautiful to be a land of terrorists who build bombs and murder each other, but the paradox at the core of the militants’ demand for freedom is that a people enslaved to petty historical hatreds can never be truly liberated. The Middle East - QED.

Later I wafted into the Metro Bar for a feed and a Guinness fix. The place was fairly jumpin’, full of bright young things including three of the most beautiful women in the world. I want to live in Derry.

I don’t remember a lot after the third pint of Guinness but I must have enjoyed myself because I woke up in a good mood. Science says should have been badly overhung, but instead I threw down a full brekky lovingly prepared by Maureen, the lady of Braehead House, and took off for a spin around the Inishowen Peninsula. My target was Malin Head, the northernmost point on the Irish mainland. I took the roundabout route via Whitecastle, Redcastle and Greencastle, which aren’t pieces in a psychedelic chess game but towns along the northern shoreline of Lough Foyle. Then it was the narrow and serpentine R238 through Gleneely to the little village of Malin and up to the lighthouse right on the tip of the Malin headland. There was a breeze blowing in from the north but nothing like the tempest along the northern coast of Scotland. I could even open the door and step out of the car without ending up in Norway. Malin tried hard to be wild and desolate in an Irish kinda way, but it was just plain gorgeous.

I rejoined the R238 at Malin and cut across to Buncrana on the western coast of Inishowen. The interior of the peninsula is mostly low-lying peat bog with the odd whitewashed stone cottage by the roadside. I got out for a 4 second pan beside a sign warning me to watch my footing, you can easily disappear into the bog without trace if you’re not careful. What a way to go! Imagine your epitaph: Here lies Bob, Sucked into a Bog. The green carpet was dotted with white plastic bags full of blocks of harvested peat, they looked like little specks of bird poop. From Buncrana it was straight back to Braehead. And the Metro Bar.

*

On the way home last night I paused on the hill above town to take in the full moon bathing Derry in soft silver light. Reflected in the mirror surface of the Foyle, it seemed like the fitting finale to an all too brief visit. This morning Maureen packed five fresh buttered scones into a ziplock bag to go with my thermos of coffee for the day’s drive to Sligo. As I took my reluctant leave she said, “And make sure you eat your vegetables!"

Next week: Yeats country, Galway and The Connemara