And there’s more – you are still a long way behind!

A proper day of mist and mellow fruitfulness as we set off early, with the thermometer reading six degrees, a whopping thirty degrees less than it did four days ago. The drive took us across the Sperrin Mountains, along the length of the scenic route that we failed to find on the previous day. We remarked on the trend for ostentatious gateposts that seem common on even quite modest dwellings.

After a lovely drive, we arrived at the Ulster American Folk Park. This should definitely be on everyone’s itinerary. It consists of period houses, almost all of which have been re-erected having been transported from elsewhere, including some from the States. These are used to tell the story of the widescale Irish emigration to the United States and Canada in a graphic and accessible way.

Although we think of mass emigration taking place in the famine years, prior to that, between 1815 and 1845, 1 million people left Ireland for North America, 400,000 of them from the counties that now make up Northern Ireland. A further million left during the famine years 1845-1851, over 300,000 from Ulster. In the eighteenth century, linen production was an important part of the Irish economy. Competition from American imported cotton, impacted on the linen producers and was an impetus for emigration. Agrarian unrest and the slump in the demand for Irish linen, led to 30,000 emigrants leaving Ulster in the 1770s, beginning chains of migration. Strangely, the main ports of departure were not on the west coast but the north and east, with ships leaving from Belfast, Newry, Derry, Portrush and even Dublin. By the 1820s, most Irish emigrants travelled first to Liverpool and then left from there.

The experience began with an indoor exhibition, focussing on the stories of real female emigrants, then we moved to the park. The whole site was very carefully arranged so you passed through the ‘Old World’, with typical Irish buildings first. Some of the buildings were inhabited by costumed guides who explained the history of the building and told the story of the emigrants who lived in that house. Only the Irish home of the Mellon family is in its original location. It is hard to imagine the logistics involved in dismantling and re-building the others. You then passed down the shopping street in an Ulster port and boarded the emigrant ship, where conditions were cramped and food poor. Those leaving during the famine were usually malnourished and/or sick before they embarked. In 1847, 20,000 Irish emigrants died on the journey. Leaving the ship, you find yourself in the ‘New World’, where the buildings have all been transported from America and include the American homes of the families whose Irish dwellings are also on the site.  Pumpkin, sweet corn and tobacco are all being grown on the New World side of the park.

There is a commitment to working towards also telling the story of the enslaved and First Nations people and the exploitation that was a result of mass emigration from Europe. We couldn’t help thinking of the hundreds of tourists at Giant’s Causeway and feeling that they should all be here too but visitors at the park seemed to be few in number, which was a great shame and their loss.

Day 11

We had a leisurely start to ensure that we didn’t arrive at the new site, a hundred miles or so to the north,  before check in time. This saw us skirting Belfast, passing a sculpture called The Rise aka ‘The Balls on the Falls’. The journey was lengthened by lanes being blocked by broken down vehicles and accidents but we arrived safely and settled on to our pitch. The River Bann is behind us but the pitch is slightly marred by being opposite the toilet block/café, so rather busier than we’d like.

A visit to a nearby supermarket to collect supplies followed.

Day 12

Not quite such an early start but, taking into account past journeys, we allowed plenty of time to reach the Giant’s Causeway, so we didn’t miss our allocated entry slot and this time we were early. Our tour guide was Mark, another wonderful raconteur, who managed to successfully walk backwards for part of the route, so he was facing us, without bumping in to the many tourists. The Causeway gets tourists from 175 different countries each year and had nearly a million visitors a year pre-Covid.

The formation of the causeway, another World Heritage Site (two in three days), began 65 million years ago, when the tectonic plates drifted apart and lava bubbled up through the fissures and solidified. Further volcanic activity over millennia created the causeway. There are over 40,000 basalt columns and contrary to common belief, only about half are hexagonal. The others are mostly pentagons and septagons but they range from triangles to one single nonagon, whose location is secret. There used to be another 20,000 columns but these were quarried in the years before the site was protected. Tourists first became aware of the site when it was written about in 1692. In 1739, Susanna Drury painted a series of pictures of the causeway, which won a competition and this greatly increased the interest in the site.

The site is also home to various flora and fauna, including the narrow-mouthed whorl snail, which is unique to only three places and is the size of a grain of sand. The population has to be counted annually. This is done by sampling metre squares. Here you can find fulmars, oyster catchers, otters and stoats. Our haul was a heron and some female eider ducks.

Kelp is farmed in the area but 300 years of salmon fishing declined with the fish stocks and the last commercial salmon fisherman gave up in 2002, by which time the annual catch was about 300 fish a year; this had once been the daily catch.

We were treated to some ‘imaginative’ legends of the giant Finn McCool, credited with forming the causeway. We saw the rock formations known as Humphrey the camel, Finn’s boot, the organ pipes and the chimneys. After Mark left us, we continued to walk round to the next bay before returning to scramble across the causeway itself. There are three causeways of different sizes. I was a bit doubtful of my ability to rock climb safely; varifocals make this sort of thing difficult, so I was pleased to accomplish this without incident but definitely not recommended for those with mobility problems.

After leaving the Causeway we drive round the coast a short way to Portrush before returning to the van.

Day 13

We drove out to look at Lough Neagh. This is not held out to be much of a tourist attraction but we felt we should see the largest lake in the United Kingdom and in the island of Ireland. We viewed it from the west. It is a lake. It is large. That’s about it really. We later learned of the serious pollution problems in the Lough. There are issues with blue-green algae but additional pollution has put it in danger of becoming a dead lake.

We then headed for the Sperrin Mountains, designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We did find our way to the edges of them; yes, beautiful, if not outstanding. Then the sat-nav slightly let us down. We were supposed to end up at a visitors’ centre in the Sperrin Mountains. Owing, we think, to the fact that Ireland seems to have many duplicate place names we ended up driving through the outskirts of Derry, that we were trying to avoid and in the middle of a housing estate. The next plan was to head to a National Trust property on the coast. Again this did not go well. We did have a pleasant drive along the Causeway Coast Road but the only National Trust property wasn’t quite where the sat-nav said it would be and was closed. We decided to call it a day. On the plus side, it was finally a little cooler and less humid, with a few showers.

A thick mist descended as we set off for the Irish National Heritage Park but fortunately, another sunny day broke through after half an hour or so. The Heritage Park contains reconstructions of buildings representing Irish history from 7000BCE to 1200CE. We have learned that if a guided tour is on offer, take it, as you learn so much more than just wandering round under your own steam. As we arrived as the park opened, we were in time for the first of three tours on offer and began by learning about pre-historic Ireland from the enthusiastic and knowledgeable Ciaron. We were the only two on this tour and the next, which covered the early Christian era. By  the time we got to the tour that covered the age of the Viking and Norman invasions, Ciaron had built up quite a crowd and was in full dramatic flow, epitomising the Irish story-telling tradition at its best. He did talk and walk pretty fast but we managed to keep up on both counts.

Here are just some of the take-aways I gleaned from Ciaron; I hope I’ve got it right! The human habitation of Ireland dates back about 9000 years and the first reconstruction we saw was of a campsite from that era. We then moved on to a New Stone Age Farmstead, representing a time when the people were clearing the forest for farmland. A Megalithic Dolmen tomb was next, of a type that was used when bodies were being cremated. Apparently it would have taken 700kg of wood to cremate a body. I can’t help wondering how anyone knows; surely this would be taking Experimental Archaeology a little too far. An excavation of a similar Irish tomb discovered the remains of twenty two people, both adults and children. DNA analysis has shown them to be an extended family group, one of whom had Down’s Syndrome. Climatic changes about 4000 years ago made Ireland a land of bogs and water. Water was revered and sacrifices were made, resulting in the bog bodies that have been recovered. A Bronze Age Stone Circle was the final prehistoric site. Apparently these are found in the south-west of Ireland and in north and mid-Ulster but rarely in between.

We moved on to the Early Christian Era sites. Unlike most of Europe, the Christianisation of Ireland was peaceful, with pagan traditions being adapted to suit Christian worship. An Ogham stone provided an example of early written Irish from about 1700 years ago. The alphabet is based on Latin and the stones are said to have magical associations. There was an early Medieval Ringfort, although it was more of a protective enclosure than a fortification. Next came a reconstruction of an early monastic site, complete with herb garden and sundial. The working corn drying kiln was fascinating, as was the watermill with the horizontal wheel submerged by the stream. Legend attributes the introduction of water mills to Ireland to C3rd Cormac MacArt. He allegedly sent for craftsmen from overseas to construct water mills, to spare his pregnant slave from having to grind corn by hand. In fact evidence for the first mills in much later than C3rd.

Ciaron’s account of the invasion era was peppered with people with unpronounceable names that are definitely beyond my spelling capacity. I clung to Henry II, who was featured in there somewhere. Viking raids from 795-1014 led to the building of long forts. A member of the powerful O’Neill clan destroyed all those in the north but in the south they led to the development of Waterford, Wexford, Cork, Limerick and Dublin. In the C11th Ireland was becoming more centralised, with fewer fragmented kingdoms. Robert FitzStephens was one character in the story whose name I have probably got right. He built an earthwork fort on the site of the Heritage Park c.1170. There was loads more but you will just have to go for yourselves to find out. Putting the Heritage Park on your itinerary is definitely recommended and to get the full benefit, availing yourself of a guided tour even more so.

Having underestimated the distance yesterday, today we drove to Lady’s Beach. This is a pilgrimage site and the pilgrimage season is now on. Lady’s Island used to be called the Island of the White Women and was a Druidic centre. The early Christians preserved it’s heritage as a site of female worship and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary.  The missionary, St Abban, designated it as a place of pilgrimage. There are remains of a Norman Castle on the island; the monastery on the site was destroyed by Cromwell in 1649. We followed the pilgrimage route, accompanied by suitable piped music. This took us past the Lady’s Island lake and bird sanctuary. Lake yes, sanctuary maybe, birds not so much, apart from some swans, a few choughs and a solitary heron. Returning to the site it was off to the Common Room to get email access and see what I have been missing.