Category: Northern Ireland

Reflections on Ireland

SDSpivey

There are a great many things that are different about both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Even different than London or the rest of Europe that we’ve seen.

Cars

Besides the driving on the left and sitting on the right, traffic is different between the Republic and UK. Road signs are mostly similar, but there is a contrast between the “feel” of the roads. I’m not certain I can say what, but there is something.

Despite there being no border control, I do not believe most Irish travel across the border very often. Currency differences, perhaps. This is leaving the people split into two groups that are no longer a cohesive Irish.

We drove down many roads that were barely wide enough to pass side by side. Some of the mountain roads did not even have any sort of guard rail (or even a wire fence).

One road was unpaved and only a car’s width wide. At one point, I looked over the side to see about 300 feet down. No kidding.

Drinks

Going into stores, the drink selection is small, do mostly to the small area available. Everywhere has milk, bottled water (still or bubbly), Coke, Coke Zero and Fanta Orange. Many also have Fanta Lemon and Club, another orange drink.

Both Fanta drinks were carbonated. The orange was not like US Fanta, it is more orange juice like, similar to Tang, but carbonated Tang. I have not had Fanta Lemon in the US, not sure if I’ve even seen it. It tastes somewhat like Fresca, although it has been a while since I had one of those.

I had a Sprite here. It included sugar and “sweeteners”, but it wasn’t labeled as diet.

I have only seen Pepsi in 2 grocery stores, in 1.5 liter bottles. Pepsi will never gain a true foothold here, the small stores just don;t have the space to have “extra” versions of drinks. Coke is the largest seller in the world, and will very likely remain here.

I bought an orange juice drink called Mi Wadi. It was a super concentrated OJ, being mixed with 9x water. It had an odd taste, but I got used to it after a few days. It also came in black currant and raspberry.

The bottles are also skinnier than what we are used to, likely due to the space restrictions in stores. They are thin enough, that it is hard to put one between your legs while driving. They tend to “roll” forward. I’ve never had that problem with US bottles.

Jams and Jellies

First off, don’t order jelly at a restaurant. What they call jelly, is gelatin or Jello, which can be found in small 3-4 oz pre-made containers at the grocery.

There are jams available, but I’ve only seen black current, strawberry, raspberry, and black berry. Occasionally, I see pepper (chili) jams, but I don’t really consider those.

Orange marmalade is quite plentiful. Although I’ve never cared for it, as it has strings of zest in it, making it tough. It normally has a bit of bitterness, perhaps as a part of the OJ reduction.

Many grocers also have lemon or tangerine. I did find a “shred-less” lemon marmalade, which is the closest thing to jelly I’ve seen. A couple years ago, I made a Mountain Dew jelly, this tastes similar. We’ve used about half the jar already, it is good.

Jams are made from fruit, jellies are made from just juice. I suppose that marmalade is jelly, with rind.

The small selection of flavors must have to do with the high cost of transport. It is cheaper to eat locally grown plants. Not many apple orchards in Ireland’s climate. Perhaps grapes in France and Spain are only good for wine making, not jam.

While I’m on jams and jelly, peanut butter is not popular outside the US, despite many cultures adopting peanuts into their cuisines. Thai is chock full of peanuts. Yet, all the Irish grocers we’ve visited had crunchy and smooth varieties.

Outlets

Countries throughout the world have adopted different plugs for their electric devices. Why? Obviously, to annoy me and to supply an industry to sell adapters.

The outlets in the UK and its commonwealth countries, including the ROI, use an awkward 240 volt plug, that has shut off switches for each outlet. Even the stoves have a shut off on the wall, to disconnect it from the mains. I don’t think my stove has been “disconnected” since it was bought.

There are a lot less outlets than we are used to, four in a room would be common.

The only outlet you will find in the bathroom might be a electric razor plug, which is physically different than all the rest.

Even the light switches are outside the door, or a pull cord inside. I suspect that a common kids prank it to flip the switch while a younger sibling is in there.

Many of the stoves and appliances were difficult for us to figure out how to get them turned on. The ovens are small, about 10 inches high. No roasting a turkey on this island.

Squeaks and Maintenance

I don’t know if it is cultural or just the dampness, but everything squeaks, doors, floors, tables, water in pipes. You can expect a noisy floorboard in an older house, but not all over the house, in every house. These were not really old houses either, perhaps about 20 years old.

We went to a “fancy” restaurant, and the table had squeaks (and rocked).

The house in Belfast had a door into the living room. I noticed the top hinge only had one screw on each side. There weren’t holes where other screws had been, they only used 2 of the 8 screws needed.

The Derry house had mold, aka “rising damp.” An occasional mold popping up in the bath is to be expected, but not in a bed room.

Internet

Internet in the ROI is not very good. I am not talking about speeds, that may be due to the house owners getting a cheaper plan. No need to spend big bucks on temporary visitors.

I had difficulty accessing various sites at different times. A site that loads now, may not load at all an hour later. I even had recurring problems with Google Maps, strangely, I would get the maps, but could not get directions.

In Limerick, I could not get my notebook to connect via WiFi, even though my iPad and mom’s computer connected fine. Luckily I brought an Ethernet cable, just for such times.

In Sligo, the WiFi, itself, would go offline for a few minutes, but I think it was just that lady’s bad equipment.

Getting my email was also a nightmare, that may have been a problem with Brighthouse’s security, though. I couldn’t even access webmail via their site, no login page, just nothing.

I don’t remember any problems once we were in Northern Ireland. The speeds were better also.

The Google Maps problem returned when we re-entered the Republic.

Water

The kitchen faucets have separate holes for cold and hot. You are able to scald and freeze yourself at the same time.

We did not have a single shower that had hot and cold knobs. They all had temperature and pressure adjustment knobs, neither seemed to work well.

In Dublin, the water temperature would cycle every minute or so, as if someone was alternating between running a hot tap and flushing the toilet. It was a large place, they should have been able to supply a consistent temperature.

Roofs

About 99% of the roofs I saw were slate or thatched, with the rest being metal sheet or wood shingle roofs. We even saw a few sod covered.

I don’t think I saw a single asphalt shingle on the whole island. Do they stand up to snow well?

Arrival at Winterfell

SDSpivey

Looking around Belfast, we really didn’t see much to do, especially on a weekend. That’s bad planning on my part.

While Mom was in the shower, I scrolled around the map this morning and spotted something that sounded interesting. Off we went to Castle Ward.

After parking and getting a map of the grounds, I see that there are several filming locations for the HBO series Game Of Thrones.

I had seen many of these pop up on searches for locations to see in Ireland, but none of them seemed important, mostly “X met Y here and then they left” scenes, that had little recognizabilty.

While the castle itself was not filmed, there was the tower Bran climbs in episode 1, a battle field, and “crossroads” where several scenes had taken place.

The tower was actually the original castle, before the family built a newer home in 1763.

There was also another castle on the estate, Audley’s Castle, which stands in for the outside shots of Lord Walder Frey’s house, “The Twins”.

We walked around the gardens a bit and looked through the manor house, before a light rain started, so we went back to town.

There is an indoor street market, with people selling their crafts and cooking up various foods.

We bought some paella and watched the jazz performers, who weren’t that bad, then had some crepes before the market closed.

We leave first thing tomorrow, so we had to head back to pack everything up.

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Carrickfergus

SDSpivey

Carrickfergus is a small town northeast of Belfast, but predates it by a century.

We went to the castle this morning, taking a short tour before browsing on our own.

The castle was used right up until after WWII, where it was used partly as bomb shelter.

Later we went downtown, but there isn’t any parking available. We saw a Hop-On bus and followed it for a bit, looking for where it had stops. Its only stop, that we saw, was at the Crumlin Road Gaol. Being outside the main downtown area, we found a spot and went into the jail for a tour. Afterwards, we had just missed the bus, and we were hungry, so we went back to the apartment to eat.

After a nap, we drove over to the Belfast Castle. Unfortunately, it is mostly a banquet and event hall, nothing much to see indoors. There was a large walking path, but we have already had enough walking this month.

There is also a restaurant downstairs, and we went in for dinner.

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Carrick-a-Rede

SDSpivey

I awoke early this morning, and I saw that the car parked in front of me had left, so I took the opportunity to back the car into the street and turn it around so I could back up the steep hill and park in front of the apartment. This made loading our bags into the car much better, but the car groaned mightily trying to go up the hill.

We had to leave Derry for Belfast. We had been to the Giant’s Causeway a few days ago, but had over looked the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge nearby. With a small detour to the trip, we headed out to the north coast, yet again.

As we arrived, the sun was just starting to peek out against the clouds, enough that we could see mainland Scotland better than before, plus it was larger.

The map sign showed puffins on the little island past the rope bridge, but they are either too small to see or too good at hiding.

It was only a 1km hike down to the rope bridge, but it was a lot of up and down the hills.

Once across, the grass is lush and green, with small white and yellow flowers all over, plus a golden moss or lichen covers the rocks. Very pretty, but also slippery.

After our hike back, we went into the “tea room” to get something. We both had corned beef sandwiches and a drink. My drink was a lightly carbonated elderflower beverage. It was a bit strange tasting, but not bad.

We then drove down to Antrim, to see the Antrim Castle. Slight problem, the castle burned down in 1922, so there is only a stepping stone outline of where the castle was. Lame.

Near the castle site, there is a hill with a trail circling around to the top. We went up, but there wasn’t anything there, not even a statue or plaque. More lame. Even the view up there wasn’t that great, it looked down on 2 grassy areas and a brick wall.

There were some gardens to browse around, but we had already seen several that were much better.

Time to head to the apartment.

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Downtown Derry-Londonderry

SDSpivey

We really haven’t spent much time in any cities since Dublin, and there wasn’t much to see around anyway, so we walked down, across the bridge to the city walls. Derry has one of the few double decker bridges in Europe and has the only remaining “full” city walls, they were never breached.

Derry is a city full of past trouble. It is the battle ground between the Irish Nationalists (for a free Ireland) and the Unionists (loyalist to the UK crown). Even the name of the city is rife with difficulty. The legal name is “Londonderry”, but it has long been called just “Derry” also.

The city was even a center to the turbulent times referred to simply as “The Troubles.” This was a time of terrorist tactics of shootings and bombings of public places, starting in the 1960’s and having deaths as late as 2002.

We ambled along, enjoying the sights, nothing really new or noteworthy, but enjoyable. Until mom spotted a Hop-On bus sign. Wait a minute, I bought tickets for the Derry Hop-On bus before we left, Unfortunately, the bus here only makes one round per hour, so we had to wait 30-40 minutes.

We took the whole tour, coming back to where we started, mainly because the driver never stopped at the places he was supposed to stop. Also, nothing looked interesting enough to stop at.

It was just a mile to the house, so we went across the Peace Bridge and walked down the street.

Ready for a nap.

Footsteps of giants

SDSpivey

We started off going to Dunluce castle, but just before getting there, there was a large pull off area. What the heck, let’s stop and see what is there.

Not much really, but it was pretty. It was also very cold and windy. The only benefit was that we could just make out Scotland on the horizon, just the Isle of Islay. We could just make out the Dunluce ruins from there as well.

We drove around the corner to the Dunluce, but they wanted too much admission for such a small place.

Next up, the Giant’s Causeway. Not much to say about that directly, except they are mostly long hexagonal, pencil-shaped rocks, that formed as the lava cooled.

There was a long downhill walk to get to the rocks on the shore. The cold wind was biting. Once down to the formations, the wind mostly was blocked by the surrounding mountains.

There is a walkway cut through the formations, to allow access to the next “beach”. There are many coins jammed into the cracks in the rock, like a wishing well. Many of the coins had corroded from the salt and now are pushing the stones apart.

About 45 minutes into our trip to the Beaghmore Stone Circles, we realized that we had missed the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. Oh, well, maybe we can still see it later.

We reached the circles and listened, there was silence. The sign stated it was the darkest sky in Northern Ireland, which probably means the furthest from any city.

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Donegal

SDSpivey

We packed up and left the freezing cottage this morning. They only seem to run the boiler for a few hours at a time, so the place never gets “warm”

We stopped off in the city of Donegal, at the Donegal Castle. It was more of what we would think of as a house, but it did have a wall around it. We arrived a bit early, they weren’t open yet, so we had to stand in the drizzle. Can’t complain much, the weather has been mostly clear and warm (for Ireland).

Then we went to a home in the National Park, Glenveagh Castle, again, not a castle, just a manor house.

On the way, the terrain changed dramatically. We were on a road with a bit of greenery next to it, but everything else we could see was brown and “dead”. Probably just hibernating.

Glenveagh went through several owners throughout the years, including 2 different Americans, who became the Earl of the house.

I was following the Google directions, but we were on the wrong road. Actually, it wasn’t a road, it was the bus path to the castle. I saw a bus coming, so I backed up a few dozen feet to a wider spot, so they could pass. The driver stopped and informed us we were going down the wrong path and redirected us to the car park. Turns out I was was almost there.

We had a long wait for the house tour, so we spent time walking around the gardens, still in the drizzle. There was a large group of 12-14 year old girls, obviously on a field trip. Fortunately, they were not part of our house tour, but there was a bus tour group that was, so it was a bit crowded.

There is a watch tower on the coast, almost straight north from Glenveagh, the Horn Head. I have no idea why it is called that, but it was cold and windy.

There was a small stone “hut” where the sentry would stand out of the wind and rain, while searching for invading ships.

I was uncertain if the car was going to make it up the steep road.

We stopped off in the nearby town at a cafe for lunch. I decided to try the Sprite. They have Fanta orange, but it is more like Tang. The Sprite wasn’t labeled at diet, but it had no sugar. I kind of feel sorry for a diabetic who comes to the US and drinks a regular Sprite, they would spike their blood sugars.

We tried to see another castle, but we arrived just before 5 and the gates were already closed. Bummer.

We then headed for our new “home”, well home for at least for a few days, in Derry/Londonderry. There is an ongoing dispute what the name of the city is or should be. Check Wikipedia for an interesting tale.

The place we are staying is at the very top of a very steep hill. Think San Francisco streets and multiply by 2. The roadway is too narrow to turn around, so I have to back down into traffic, no big deal.

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More caves and gardens

SDSpivey

We set out for the Marble Arch caves, just across the border in Northern Ireland. We were about half way when Mom realized she didn’t bring her British pounds, all we had were Euros, but they did accept credit cards, so no problem.

This cave system had an entrance that was a lot less steep than the Mitchelstown caves.

After a short walk, 6-7 minutes, stopping to view interesting formations and get history, we arrived at the end of the area we could walk. The cave is normally flooded, so we climb into boats and continue our tour, in style. At least as much style as one can have in the dark, while being dripped on by water soaking through the rock, and ducking our heads to miss low hanging ridges.

Alas, our ride wasn’t for the whole trek, we had to dock and continue on foot, like peasants.

There was a short segment that had no handrails or walls beside us, just water flowing on both sides of us. It was kind of strange, knowing that if the water level increased just a touch, we’d be walking in the water.

The guide would stop and allow everyone to reassemble. At one of these stops, I was looking down at a small “valley” and was just thinking about taking a picture, when it rippled. It wasn’t a valley at all. I was looking at the reflection of the ceiling in the very still water.

At this point, the guide explained that originally they would have to end the tour here, the roof was too low to allow another boat crossing. But some smart dude had the idea of splitting the sea like Moses. There was a walkway with short walls on each side that held back the water, allowing us to continue walking.

After completing the tour, we climbed stairs through what looked like a WWII steel bunker tunnel. At the top, we waited for remainder of the group, then passed through another door, only to find 150 more stairs on the outside to climb. Mom was winded, but so was I.

There was absolutely no cell signal there, but I did know that our next destination was just a few minutes down the road, no map needed.

We were at Florencecourt, a still functioning farm manor house. We bought our ticket for the next tour, but it was an hour and a half wait, so we strolled around the gardens and had a bite in the cafe.

Many of the building were no longer needed, like the carpenter shop, laundry, or the saw mill, and were converted into small museum sites. Part of the tour took us into the original kitchen and servant’s duty rooms. It really did feel like Downton Abbey.

Originally, the plan was to go to an abbey, but after buying the tour tickets, I realized that this tour would not be over soon enough for us to drive to the abbey before the last entry. Instead, we found another museum nearby, the Enniskillen Castle Museum. A museum about castles? We weren’t sure what it was about, but we’ve seen so much Irish history, but really haven’t learned anything about current Ireland. Turns out it is a museum inside what was a garrison, not what we would think of as a castle.

It was only 25 minutes before closing so the clerk didn’t charge us, but we didn’t have a lot of time to see it all. It turned out it was a tribute to the local soldiers in WWI, WWII, and the Napoleonic war. History, but at least more recent history.

Glencar and entering the UK

SDSpivey

We stopped off at a small water fall this morning, Glencar Falls. It is only 50 feet or so high, but the largest we’ve seen so far.

I spoke with someone there about if there is any path to drive up the mountain. He didn’t really give me an answer, but he did tell me about trees that were planted on the mountainside, with the light and dark trees forming a Celtic knot. I’m not sure if it is true, I didn’t see it.

Then we headed for the Organic Center, where they teach about responsible gardening and soil management. It mostly looked like any Lowes or Home Depot garden center, even most of the plants would be the same.

We jumped over the border into Northern Ireland, just for the heck of it. There was barely even a sign letting you know, definitely no crossing guards.

Driving around aimlessly, I stopped at a stop sign (because you’re supposed to) and suddenly noticed an old castle right next to me.

I found parking right there and we walked up. A sign on the castle gates stated we needed to enter through the cafe. There were several signs stating that the cafe was now open, but the cafe operators obviously did not read them, their door was locked.

We made a very quick stop at the Sligo Abbey ruins, in downtown Sligo, before going back to the Aldi to get some things we needed, like dish soap and salt, things that should have already been here.