It's been a while!

I contacted Hugh and Karen Rice last week, and on Thursday they invited me up to Ballycastle, Co. Antrim. I booked some buses for the next day, and packed my bags.

I headed to Dublin on Friday, transffered and got myself to Belfast. I met up with Hugh and Karen, and they drove me out to Ballycastle, and we arrived in the evening. It was really nice to see people from home! Hugh is an artist, and lives in Winnipeg part of the year, painting prairie landscapes. The other part of the year, he's in Ballycastle, painting scenes of the glens of Antrim.

Ballycastle is at the northern tip of Ireland, and Rathlin Island is just off the coast. In good weather, you can see the Mull of Kintyre across the sea, the edge of Scotland. They drove me around the town before getting some fish and chips for dinner, very welcome after the 8 hour trip it took to get there. It happened that the Antrim Fleadh (trad music competition) was on, and we attended a student concert. It was really great to see, as 107 kids were up on stage, playing whistle, flute, box, banjo, bodhran... There were a few other acts, and I even went up to join the Ballycastle group to finish the concert. Afterwards we went to a session in town, with some good musicians.

The next day, Hugh and Karen took me on a tour of the glens. The scenery is pretty spectacular, as the glens are a series of mountain valleys, covered with small farms. Along the tops of the hills you can just make out bunches of brown lines that are the remnants of turf cuttings. Turf is still a popular fire fuel, and a few people are still out cutting turf by hand. There's also sheep and donkeys everywhere. We made our way around Torr Head, past Cushendun (where there's a cave leading to someone's house!), Cushendall (where we met a couple of Winnipegers for dinner), down to Waterfoot (in Glenarriff, "Queen of the Glens").

On Monday we went to to Carrick-a-Rede, a point on the north coast. There's a rope bridge from the cliff edge, across the water to a small island where they used to put a few sheep, and haul fish from the boats. It's really stunning, as the top of the island is about 60-80 ft above the water. We left there to go to the Giant's Causeway, an amazing geologic formation. It's a bunch of hexagonally shaped pillars of rock... the pictures explain it better! They jut out into the ocean, and the tide was low enough that we could get quite far out. We eventually ended up in Bushmills, home of the Bushmills brewery, which has been brewing beer since 1608.


On Tuesday, we took a trip to Rathmelton, Co. Donegal, where Hugh has some pictures up in a gallery. Afterwards, we drove through the Fanad area of Donegal. The landscape could be incredibly bleak, full of rocky hills. Then it would suddenly change, like when we came over a mountain, and below us was the most incredible beach. The rest of the Fanad was much the same, very rugged, beautiful scenery.

On Wednesday we went through the bogs on the mountain. Hugh showed me turf a farmer was cutting, and it was neat to see it done like it's been done for generations. We took a hike across the bog (an adventure in itself, it's like walking across wet marshmallows), till we came to a dolmen. A dolmen is a Neolithic stone structure, from about 5000 years ago. They usually consist of three stone uprights capped by a fourth stone. They were probably used as tombs. The one we found was quite large.

On Thursday, Hugh and Karen drove me back to Belfast, and gave me a quick tour of the city, before I had to catch my bus. I'd like to thank them for such an awesome week in the North, as I wouldn't have gotten up there and seen so much on my own.

So now I'm back in Galway. The World Bodhran Championships are next weekend, and I'll be visiting my friend in England in June, so things will be busy!
The is the view across Lough Suile.
Me sitting on the rocks at the Giant's Causeway.
Me (and Karen!) on the rope bridge.
I'm sitting on top of a dolmen.
The is Ballymacstoker beach in Co. Donegal, as seen from inside one of the three caves that open up to the beach. There were some nice waterfalls coming down the sides of caves.
This is the Giant's Causway!