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| At the Peace Wall |
Day 11 (8/13/15)
As I said in yesterdays blog this day got off to an early
start. We had requested a breakfast to go last night so we stopped by the desk
to grab it. We have a feeling that somebody had dropped the ball on the
breakfast because when we asked the morning desk person about it he took off in
a bit of a panic and said he would be right back. A little later he returned
with what turned out to be three cheese sandwiches. We headed towards our
designated Pickup sight. Unlike yesterday there were copious amounts of people
waiting to get on buses. Our tour luck held though and when our bus pulled up
and we showed our guide the voucher he said he had two seats reserved for us in
the front row of the bus. Neither one of us ever figured out why we had
reserved seating when we have to assume that most people bought their tickets
as we did on line. I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth however and anyone
who has ever taken a bus tour knows how nice it is to have the front seat. With
the front seat you have the opportunity to look and photograph out both the
front and side windows. You are also right next to the tour guide so if he is
the type who likes to talk like our guide John you get information that is not
broadcast to the rest of the bus, not to mention being the first off when you
get to a place of interest. Our first stop, other than a quick rest stop, was
Belfast. It turns out that not that many years ago a tour like this wouldn’t
have been possible. Even if you could have gotten across the border into
Northern Ireland there was no direct route between Dublin and Belfast and most
of your day would have been taken up in just driving to Belfast and back. In
the last ten years they have done away with the restrictions at the border and have
built a bridge that allows for a more direct route to Belfast. It turns out
that half our tour was going to the Titanic Museum and the other half, like us,
were going on the “Black Taxi Tour”. I could write an entire blog on the Black
Taxi Tour but in a nutshell the Black Taxi Tour is a bunch of taxi drivers,
both Protestant and Catholic, who have joined together to promote peace by
informing the world of what is going on behind the scenes in Northern Ireland.
Peace is a very tentative thing in Northern Ireland and there are still a lot
of hard feelings on both sides of the fence. The first stop on the tour was at
the mural walls on the catholic side. It turns out that anyone who gets
approval can paint a mural on these walls so there are even murals dealing with
themes from the U.S. After a period of time they are painted over and a new
mural goes up. You could tell that our driver and guide Jordi was very
passionate about their mission. After the murals we went to the Catholic Church
where one of the major players in negotiating peace, Fr Alec Reid, had been a
priest. After that we headed to the so called Peace Wall. We had caught
glimpses of it as we drove through the city but you don’t realize how massive
it is until you are right next to it. In some areas it is thirty five feet tall
and able to sustain the blast of a hand grenade. Here we stopped and continued
our history lesson on the “troubles” as they call the events that have led up
to such a divided Northern Ireland. Our bus guide John who was also from
Belfast had pointed out the security cameras as we crossed the border and it
turns out that Belfast has more security cameras per capita than any other city
in the world. We then passed through the gates and went to the protestant side.
The gates close down every night starting with the smaller side streets and finally
the larger thoroughfares. When you get to the Protestant side the first thing
that you notice is all the English flags. Just about every house flies a flag
and many streets were lined with them. The other thing you notice is that most
of the wealth is in the Protestant section. The Protestant section also had
their walls of murals, but in my opinion, where the catholic side seemed to
promote peace these murals here seemed to be more about glorifying their war
heroes. We were told however that a lot of these buildings were being torn down
and hopefully things will change. Our last stop was to sign the “Peace Wall” on
the Protestant side. It had been a real eye opener for us and was hard to leave
Jordi. In a very short time he had gained our respect and admiration. I gave
him a piece of my “Peace Paper” and wished him the best of luck for peace in
the future. We met up with the rest of our group at the Titanic Museum and
after a quick look around the grounds reloaded the bus and headed north past
the studio where “Game of Thrones” was currently filming. We continued north
until we reached the northern coast where we stopped to photograph Dunluce
Castle, one of the castles used in filming the Game of Thrones. We weren’t allowed
to close since they were currently filming but we were able to get some shots
from the road. We then worked our way along the coast until we came to the
Giant’s Causeway. Giant’s Causeway is a natural landform made up of around
forty thousand interlocking basalt columns caused by a volcanic eruption. It
would be easy to spend an entire day there but after a little over an hour it
was time to continue on to our last stop at Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge. Since arriving
at the north coast the scenery had been breathtaking with glimpses of the coast
of Scotland off in the distance. Carrick-A-Rede was no exception. Everywhere
you looked there was something you wanted to explore. Eileen and I started immediately
on the twenty minute hike to the bridge. We had heard that there could be long
lines and we wanted to make sure that we were able to do the trip across the
bridge. When we got there we were again lucky and the line was pretty short. On
our way back across we did have to wait a little longer, which gave us time for
photographs, but when we reached the other side we saw that the line was now
extending way up the hill. We slowly worked our way back to where the bus was
parked stopping to take photos as we went. Soon, unfortunately, it was time to
start home. It had been a wonderful day and emotional rollercoaster, from the
emotions of Belfast to the beauty of the north coast. The bus meandered its way
back to Belfast through rural areas and small towns. Again, our guide continued
our ongoing history/geography lesson. Because of heavy traffic we skirted Belfast
on the east side this time and meandered through even more scenic areas.
Eventually we hooked back up with the main highway south of Belfast and headed
for Dublin. In spite of the diversions we ended back in Dublin almost right on
time, tired but with our head swimming with all that we had seen.
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| Eileen with our Black Taxi |
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| Mural Wall (Catholic Side) |
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| Wide range of Subjects |
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| First Ten People to Die in Hunger Strike in 1981 |
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| First glimpse of Peace Wall with British Flag flying on Protestant side |
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| Church that Fr. Alec Reid was Priest at |
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| Just one of many security cameras |
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| Mural on Protestant Side. Poppies represent Catholics he killed |
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| The barrel of this gun appears to follow wherever you go |
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| Eileen with Dunluce Castle |
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| Giant's Causway |
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| Basalt Columns |
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| Climbing the Columns |
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| My one Build at Giant's Causeway |
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| Northern Coast |
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| Carrik-A-Rede Rope Bridge |
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| Fishing Hut |
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| View from the Bridge |
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| Don't look Down |
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| Coast looking east |
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| Another view of the Bridge |
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| Everywhere there is Beauty |
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| Coming back across the bridge |
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