Category: Belfast

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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