The Giant’s Causeway, Game of Thrones and Derry – 30th August 2017

Dia Dhuit from Derry

Wow, what a day!!

After one of the worst hostel breakfasts in history, we boarded Shrek (big green bus) and headed out of Belfast. Our final destination was Derry, but we had a MASSIVE day planned before we got there.

Our first stop for the day was the Dark Hedges or more commonly known as The Kings Road from Game of Thrones (GOT). We have seen some pretty amazing GOT filming locations in the past two years and this one did not disappoint. 200 year old beech trees line this public street and it was hauntingly beautiful. I could almost picture The Hound complaining as he rode up here!

Next up was the rope bridge at Carrick-a-rede. This ancient bridge is now part of the National Trust and is well-maintained but was traditionally used by fishermen to cross to the island outcrop to fish the teeming oceans. I elected not to cross – the whole heights thing – but my brave wife crossed it and told me it was…terrifying. Notch one to big Sedge!!

We stopped for lunch in a pub called the Fullerton Arms and we polished off a steak and Guinness pie and a pint for good measure. They also had a mock GOT throne and we all got cheesy pictures after 200 Asian Cersies did!! Classic!

Our next stop was a place that I think of when I think Northern Island; The Giants Causeway. For those that don’t know about this place, it looks like it may be the start of a stone bridge between Ireland and Scotland. Thousands and thousands of hexagonal blocks of varying height make up this outcrop and it is geographically unique as these shaped blocks were made by cooling lava and specific environmental forces. So cool! I was super pumped to see this and powerwalked down the 1.5 kilometre road.

It was other-wordly – but fucking packed!! This was where Led Zeppelin took their cover pic for “House of the Holy.” It is, again, maintained by the National Trust and you could not move. There were over a thousand people here who got absolutely DRENCHED when the horizontal rain came lashing down, but I didn’t really care. I loved The Giant’s Causeway and was made even better when Rory told us the folk tale of how Fionn Muchaill (Fin McCool) created and then destroyed the bridge. Rory is such a great guide as he is not only coach driver but fills our heads with great facts, shows us cool architecture and talks politics and faerie tales in one breath…total Dude!!

My pedometer by this stage was registering that we’d done about 14,000 steps and we all had a wee snooze on the bus before we arrived in the pivotal town of Derry. Depending on who you are determines what you call this town. The Catholics call it Derry whereas the Protestants call it Londonderry… both claims are justified – depending on who you talk to, but it’s easy to just type Derry, so that’s what I’m going with.

We checked into Hostel Connect around 5pm and this joint was like a fortress. There were 15 of us that were herded through the front door security system and as we handed old mate our passports we were all herded into the one room. There are a few young kids on this trip who are hostelling for the first time and they were bugging man. We’re old hands and this didn’t really phase us. The bunks however were constructed of pine and were three storeys high!! I had to sleep on the top bunk and it was a bit of a mish to get up and down – but I survived.

The whole bunk/bonding thing made us a tight knit group – the 13 girls, me and a young kid called Nick from upstate New York – and by the time that we started our walking tour at 6.15pm, we were all laughing at our lot in life.

Another Rory was our tour guide for this evening and he was a small man in his 30s with a flaming ranga beard, nice clothes and a flat cap. He couldn’t have looked more country Irish if he tried. Rory had a quiet, calm voice and I knew instantly that this was an intelligent man that would be a fantastic guide. He did not disappoint.

Rory took us around the Derry walls that are the best preserved city walls in Europe. These walls once encircled the entire city and were ringed by the River Foyle. He told us all about the fight between William the Orange and King Charles in the 1600s and how hundreds of people starved in the city as the Irish tried to hold back the invading British. He also told us how a few short years later in 1690, the Orange men annihilated the Irish and of course this is still celebrated to this day – which does nothing for the reconciliation process.

Rory – a Catholic – then took us down to Bogside, where he grew up and he showed us the Catholic murals this time. The murals and memorials were poignant and we even saw the Bloody Sunday memorial. Rory read to us in Gaelic and taught us the Loyalist side of events. All of his family members had been to jail and he grew up in a town where hundreds of families lost members to either the UDA, the British Army or the penal system – where all the guards were Protestant. We saw Protestant murals in Belfast and we now saw the other side in Derry. There are also peace walls in Derry and even though there is a ceasefire, you can feel it under the surface. The town is still segregated but the IRA still basically run the town. On the Catholic side of town – separated by the Foyle River and the Peace Wall there live 75,000 Catholics and 500 Protestants… they don’t kill each other anymore, but the generational hatred will take time to ebb as everyone still remembers.

The North Remembers!

Everywhere that we go up in this part of the world, we can tell who the majority population is. If the Union Flag and UDA flag are flying, they are Protestants, but if the Irish flag and either the Palestinian, EU or blue flag with a yellow sun on it are up, then the area is Loyalist (or Catholic,)

Rory finished by saying that he feels hope for the future. Tourism is booming and people all shop together in the CBD. He said that war would never break out again as you need people, guns, money, time and structure to build regiments, and people never want to see this again. Sure there will always be dickhead splinter cells and pissed-off kids, but he sees Ireland moving forward – though everyone is in limbo over how Brexit will affect all of Europe.

We finished off at an Italian restaurant called Spaghetti Junction where we had bruschetta, arancini balls, lasagne (fantastic) and pizza plus a glass of wine, before these two little 18,000 step kids crawled back to the big pine bunks and had a shite sleep…

Anyway off to Galway tomorrow –should be good as one of the young Aussie girls Georgia turns 21 in this rockin’ party town.

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