DAY ONE:
We left the port in Holyhead, Wales around two in the afternoon bound for the land of the black gold and fairies.
For the last year I have been stuck in the same place doing the same thing while my friends bounce from continent to continent.
The purpose of this trip is to view where I come from, my heritage and culture. My travelling companion is my father who will show me the sights and I’ll see where he grew up.
We were due to arrive in Dublin sometime around four in the afternoon. During the ride over on the ferry I amused myself by watching the suckers sticking their holiday money into the fruit machines that were flashing ‘�1000 payout’. I wondered whether it was the thousand pound pay out or the flashing lights that had attracted them.
A girl sat down opposite me and after the usual polite smile we both preceded to look at anything else around us except each other, she produced a chocolate bar and offered me some.There was no mistaking that accent, I had found another Australian. We got along all right, talking about what we had been doing while in the UK and when we pulled into Dublin we arranged that the three of us would meet up in ‘Davy Byrns’ for a pint of the black.
To all you culture buffs, Davy Byrns was the pub Leopold Bloom drank in.
We checked into a marvellous B+B called McMenamins in south Dublin and set off for the town.
Outside Davy Byrns we waited for our new friend to arrive. To cut the other stuff out, she either got lost or abducted by a gang of pissed off Leprechauns who have used up all their wishes, for we got stood up and so promptly set off for Temple bar. After a bite to eat, the ol’ fella decides he’s going to head back to the B+B.
Now I’m here alone, this is what I was looking forward to. I set off to look around and find a cosy little pub I can curl up in. I have a thing for dark old pubs; I hate pubs that are well lit and inhabited by those guys that shop in the same store and go to the same barber (you know the type).
I end up walking to McDaids (Brendan Behan’s watering hole) and there is some small street party going on outside with people dressed up in weird outfits that could be part medieval, part Star Trek. I stare at this for five-minutes and still have no idea what it’s about except that a dummy got it’s head chopped off by a guillotine and the head was passed around the crowd. Shrugging my shoulders and handing the head to the person next to me, I set off for Merrion Row to have a drink at O’Donaghues.
After a drink at O’Donaghues, I decide to make my way back to the B+B.The map I was given is inaccurate and the street the B+B is in doesn’t appear on it so now I’m lost. Find my way back to Merrion Row and drop into Foyles bar for a swift one, a look at the map and then off home.
Ten pints and four hours later I stumble out the front door with a guy called George, swearing we’d be mates forever. We swapped numbers and I headed home.
I was walking and writing a few notes for a story idea when I hear an almighty squeal and my vision is a awash with arms, belly buttons, hair and breasts. I have just been mobbed by three girls of eighteen wanting to know what I was writing about them. After I opened my mouth and they found out I was Australian I had to answer all the usual questions about Neighbours, Home and Away and the rest of the intellect altering crap Australia seems to excel at producing and the rest of the world likes to buy. After we all exchanged names I headed home getting lost only once more and subsequently passed out until morning.
DAY TWO (GOOD FRIDAY):
If I could recommend only two things to an Alien that has arrived on Earth it would be, go see the Great Barrier Reef and do not go to Dublin on Good Friday.
A more boring place I’m sure must exist but there wouldn’t be many. Nothing is open, well nothing of any interest around the city, and if you want a drink, forget it!
We head out of town to Glendalough where part of “Excaliber” was filmed. The view took my breath away. I don’t know whether it was the light at that time of day but there was definitely something very spiritual about that lake. I took a pebble from the shoreline to lay on the grave of W.B. Yeats when we reach Sligo.
We travelled up to Powers Court; a mansion with a magnificent garden (these Lords knew how to pick a good spot); we then drove the few miles down to the waterfall, which was another location in Excalibur. If you’ve seen the movie, it is where Arthur and Lancelot are on the bridge, meeting for the first time and Merlin is trying to catch the fish.
DAY THREE:
We set off early for Belfast. Thus begins the heritage part of our trip.
On the way there, Dad casually mentions a tomb called ‘Newgrange’ that was built by Neolithic farmers five-thousand years ago. That’s done it; I love history and this thing is five-hundred years older than the first pyramid. I have to see it.
Anyone that has any sense of detecting ghosts then this place will blow your mind. If you don’t like confined spaces, best not to enter the tomb. I have never seen anything like this.
It is a passage tomb built from slabs of rock that weigh about a ton each. The farmers would drag them up from the riverbed and lay them at angles across the other slabs creating a fifteen-foot high ceiling. A sealing stone was placed on top and they built a drainage system into the roof. The tomb has been waterproof for five-thousand years and the interior is intact, it has stood standing all that time. It was discovered by accident in the late 1600′s and the exterior has been reconstructed.
Like anything of value, the ignorant have carved their legacy into the rock with such imaginative slogans like "Joe Bloggs was here 1891". The artefacts inside were stolen and a basin was smashed but other than that it is intact and now protected.
Walking up the nineteen metre long passageway I felt I could have been here before. My entire body was buzzing, my mind was saying ‘hey dick-head this is a tomb, it’s been standing for thousands of years. Wth your luck, today it will collapse.’
Once inside the main part of the tomb we are given some more facts about the building of it and the lights are turned out. Holy shit! You know how when you’re a teenager and a dark room was necessary to write the manic poetry and your Dad would walk in and turn on the light and call your bedroom a tomb? Well, he’s wrong! I can say I’ve been in a tomb with no lights on and I could hear the thumping of hearts around me, the breath of the person next to you caressing your ear gives you that puckered effect. The feeling was incredible though.
They turn off the lights for a simulation; you see this is the only tomb like this in the world. After it was constructed it was sealed by a door at the front, to enter it you had to climb in through the slot made above the door, but this slot also serves a greater purpose. On the shortest day of the year when the sun is beginning to rise a shaft of light enters the slot and slowly illuminates the entire tomb from impenetrable darkness to brilliant light. The whole thing lasts less than a couple of minutes and the tomb is plunged into darkness again for the rest of the year. I want to know how these guys knew how to do that, how did they know it would work?
The theory on the light entering the tomb is to take the souls of the dead, new life, new beginning. For the rest of the journey North I was dumbstruck and slack jawed, whatever Dad was saying I didn’t hear. I was communicating with something else. If you ever get the chance to see that tomb, do it, it is definitely worth it.
Belfast knocked me back into reality pretty quickly. Sweet Jaysus this is my history, this is where I come from, here among the brick and barbed wire, the fortified police stations and Republican graffiti, among the Tri Colour’s that swayed in the breeze along the Falls Road.
I have been here before, but that was when I was young, long enough to have developed the Belfast accent when I was a kid that got me many a hiding back home in Australia.
Belfast was definitely an eye opener. We went to Mill Town cemetery and visited my grandparent’s grave (Dads parents). I saw the house Dad lived in and where my grandparents lived until they died. I remember standing out the front of the house talking to a British solider when I was three, it was a strange feeling standing in the same spot again with that memory.
I saw the street and house my mother grew up in, where she worked and the corner on which my father asked her to go steady with him. I saw the flats they lived in when they were married and the bench my father sat on the morning they left for Australia.
On the outskirts of Belfast we visited a couple of the old farms my father grew up on. My grandfather was a farm labourer and moved from farm to farm, meaning most of the time my father had miles to walk to various schools. We visited the site of one of the schools he went to that is now playground.
We headed to Downpatrick that evening to a B+B called Pheasant’s Hill. I went to my room and wrote in my journal for a couple of hours.
DAY FOUR:
We started today by visiting the grave of my other grandparents, in Newcastle. We visited the Caravan Park they retired to and I remember playing there with my sister and my third cousin when I was ten.
Those were good times; ten years old in another country you think you’re so cool, my third cousin became my girlfriend for the two weeks were there and we wrecked havoc (we thought we did). All we really did was hang out in the forest playing different members of the A-team. I remember when it came to kiss her goodbye (the first kiss) I was so nervous I couldn’t speak, our parents are watching us with that dopey ‘Oh, they’re so cute’ smile etched on their heads and I’m looking for the exit. Why are girls so much cooler about that than boys are?
After I make the adults turn their backs I try to remember what my friend taught me about kissing girls. Okay, I got the hand on the hip thing going here, now all I got to do is press my mouth against hers and that’s it, here goes… well yes that was pleasant, I’m now a man.
You know when you should just leave things alone and not push the issue? Well, I’ve never actually got the hang of that one. Sitting in the back of the car, ready to head to the airport, I want another kiss and I don’t care who sees me. I reach out the window and what was supposed to be a cool move turns into me dragging her towards me and banging her head on top of the window. You’ve now learnt too much about me and I’m going to get back to the topic at hand.
Also today I saw the house my father was born in. It is derelict (I think there’s a couple of squatters living in it), but the door was open and we went inside. This trip for me was an eye opener but I think the ol’ fella saw a few too many ghosts. Standing in the main room of that tiny house I knew he was thinking back over fifty years ago when his mother would tell him and his brother the stories of Irish legend. I have seen a photograph of him outside that house when he was only a few weeks old. It makes you think.
We visited another school he went to. This one was still standing but boarded up and condemned. I took a few photographs of him standing outside the school and then we headed down to Ballymena to visit my penfriend of fourteen years.
I met her for the first time two years ago and we got along all right for having written for twelve years and never spoken. This time was bizarre, I’ve had some strange things happen to me and I’ve seen a sight or two but if you stuck me on a lie detector I’d swear I stepped into the twilight zone.
We arrange to meet her at a roundabout and to follow her back to her parent’s house where she was staying for Easter. I wait at the roundabout and half an hour later she arrives. I open the door to her car and say hello which I think is the usual polite thing to do, she doesn’t turn the radio down and I can’t hear the one word whatever it was that came out of her mouth. Anyway, we’re travelling to her parents house I’m riding with her I still haven’t had so much as a how do you do. Old friends hug, right? Nope not on this moon.
We get to her folk’s place and we all take our places and I can feel the line of sweat rising on my spine trickle down my lower back. Now, when I have people come over I ask them if they would like a cup of tea. I’m sure most people do. Nope, not on this moon. They were friendly enough but I felt I gate-crashed a funeral wearing nothing but a T-shirt that has ‘blow me’ written across it.
The conversation…look I’ve no idea what was said or anything else that happened. Basically we sat there very still while the bullshit worked its way around the room greeting us with a kick in the nuts. We lasted about an hour maybe more; I needed a Marlboro fast. We made our excuses and left. Now back in the car, just me and dad, both of us sitting there trying to be cool, I can’t hold it in any longer, ‘What the f*** was that about!’ I screamed. He didn’t know but was just as spooked as I was about the whole thing. I still don’t know what happened.
DAY FIVE:
Travelled along the Antrim coast toward Bushmills. The weather is bad so the view isn’t all it should be.
Arrived in Bushmills around lunchtime and promptly headed to the distillery for the tour and a glass of Blackbush. I got picked to be the whiskey taster and after swallowing everything set out before me it wasn’t hard to announce Bushmills the winner. I even got a certificate.
We were supposed to see the Giant’s Causeway but the weather got so bad we missed out on it. We had dinner in the Bushmills Inn which was fantastic, then headed back to Craig Park B+B.
There are no street lights where we are staying and the landscape is open field. I was outside in the dark having a cigarette and listening to the wind and the rain and started thinking about Banshees and other mystical beasts. Out here it’s easy to see why people believe in them, I spooked myself enough to leave the rest of the cigarette and head back inside.
DAY SIX:
On the road all day from Co. Antrim, making our way down to Sligo then onto Westport. The scenery along the way was magnificent even with the rain.
We visited the grave of the great man W. B Yeats and I left him the rock I picked up at Glendalough. We found ‘Innisfree’ we think, someone had built a cabin on one of the two small islands so we figured that must be it. (Innisfree is a famous poem by Yeats).
We headed on to Westport and after a few pints at Mat Molloys pub we headed back to the B+B.
DAY SEVEN:
Left Westport around 6:30am to head for Clifden. About an hour out of Westport we arrive in Conemmerra.
Wow! There is a huge crystal lake surrounded by mountains and not a soul around. No cars, no houses, only a few sheep staring at us. We could be the only living creatures on earth; this is the most beautiful view I have ever seen. We stop and take photographs before heading back along the road where the view keeps getting better and better. Words can not do this place justice.
We picked up a hitchhiker from Brussels named Jan and he traveled with us the rest of the day through to Clifden and into Galway. Jan and I had a couple of pints before he left to find a hostel and Dad and I walked the streets for a few hours before heading back to the B+B to watch the football.
I lie on the creaky bed and write in my journal and remember a strange old guy we met sitting on a wall in the middle of nowhere. He was holding a crutch and to all intents and purposes looked like he was waiting for someone. We asked him for directions and he said he’d show us if we could give a ride into town. It’s times like this you ask the question, who and why here? He was in the middle of nowhere and could hardly walk, he’d been on the turps but he was a funny old bastard. Easing himself out of the car he told us he was off to have his crutch decommissioned.
Head back to Dublin early in the morning.
DAY EIGHT:
Spent the day in Dublin going around the writer’s museum and walking around the city. Time for the souvenir present buying. I buy Bronwyn, my girlfriend, an Irish whistle, and a fluffy rabbit for my latest cousin.
That night I found a bar and a drinking partner in an old guy named Michael who knew everything about castles and Irish history. I sat there sipping my Guinness listening to him talk. It’s true what they say, the old are wise and he knew more than I did about the topic he liked to talk about.
But in those couple of hours in that bar we two strangers met and became friends briefly, shared a few drinks and couple of bad jokes which was the theme throughout the trip.
This is a very small part of my road trip, but if you are thinking of going to Ireland then I say do it, it is the most magical place on earth. The accommodation I have mentioned is excellent and can be found and booked on the internet. The other places we stayed aren’t worth mentioning. I hope you get something out of my travels, who knows maybe I’ll be me reading about your journey next time.
Oh yeah, if you like to sing Irish songs, O’Donagahues in Merrion Row is the place for you to be.
There is no place like Dublin anywhere on earth, and never let anyone tell you that the Guinness tastes the same the world over. Real Guinness can only be found in Dublin, but that in itself is worth the trip.
