Holywood to Bangor, a walk for Northern Ireland Hospice.

After arriving in Holywood via the train from Belfast, we found our coats being adorned with a bright green Walking for N.I Hospice sticker and we set out on our way along the North Down Coastal Path. 2 hours and 35 minutes later, windswept, soaked by sea spray, sand in the shoes and with slightly sorer legs than we set off with, we arrived at the Pickie pool opposite Bangor Harbour.

Our sponsored walk started out as a good idea from Norn Girl (officially named in response to being named Yawkshire Boy). She had received information on the walk from the Hospice as she had done a different walk last year with her sister and mum in memory of her Granddad. So after receiving some very generous donations from our friends, families and colleagues we made it out of bed this morning bright and early and made our way to Holywood. From the train we stepped onto the platform and found ourselves in a wind tunnel. The first reprise coming as we walked down through the underpass and into the well sign posted leisure centre. A bit of form stamping later we were wished good look and we took our first steps onto the Ulster Way North Down coastal path.

It began well and although walking into a strong wind blowing down Belfast Lough, we made good if not slightly slow progress, probably hindered by me stopping for a few seconds every so often to try and get a decent picture. The sky over head was quite overcast with only occasional breaks in the cloud and the waves were cresting well before they got anywhere near the shore, sending wisps of spray into the air. The path meandered slowly around the small sandy, shingle and pebbly beaches that stretch along the shore at Cultra, the Royal Belfast Golf Club and other little hamlets containing houses with what must be some of the biggest windows in County Down.

At one point where the path juts out along a rocky outcrop and where the sea water laps against the rocks just feet from where you’re walking, the waves made for a game of dare. The options were:
1) run and look like a wimp trying to avoid getting a salty shower from the heavy sea spray that made it at least 8 or 9 ft into the air - but probably getting hit anyway or...
2) walk it and anticipate every step as being the one that will see you soaked.

We went with option 2. I’d like to think our fellow walkers, watching on and who were yet to face the choice, were very impressed by our placing everything on 0, roulette like defiance of the odds of a soaking.

They didn’t have to wait long for us to demonstrate that option 1 was where the money (aka staying dry and only mildly salty) was at. A couple of decent sized waves later and we were dripping from head to toe on one side. Luckily for us the wind was our natural hair drier even if it didn’t have the multifaceted capacity to provide a hairbrush at the same time. Handy but very cold and the salt on skin left behind didn’t do us very well when it came to bending our hands or expressing any sort of facial expression.


Further down the way we had to climb some steps which at the summit provided a close up of a herd of cows. Friendly they were too. Or maybe they were just curious or just a bit bemused to have so many people at once passing them by within such a short space of time? There seemed to be a constant stream of people along the paths, even more people than seagulls which was quite suprising. At least a hundred that we could see between those ahead and those behind us who seemed to be constantly overtaking. Why people wanted to run past us only to bunch up ahead walking again was a bit weird but maybe they just like to be competitive or maybe they just got fed up of me and my camera. They probably didn’t enjoy the scenery as much but maybe they get out and about more often.

Being over taken wasn’t demoralising though, that was left to Killroot Power station or as it will now be know; Kill-moral-oot. Due to the geography of the North Down coast in relation to that of its neighbouring shoreline in County Antrim, Kill-moral-oot can be seen from just about everywhere. It’s almost always in your eye line out to sea but you’re constantly walking at an angle zigzaging towards or away from it. At no point does it appear you are making any ground on it.

Putting that out of mind we then traversed along the scenic beaches at Helens Bay and Crawfordsburn Country Park and as we did the sun started to win its battle to be seen and showed itself for good spells, helping take the chill out of the breeze. As we continued to plod along admiring the view of the sands, we were captivated by the “Warning – Beware of Unexpected waves” signs and like the big kids we are, we began waving at each other at random intervals followed by laughing out heads off as if it was the best joke we’ve heard in years.

With just a mile or two to go of the 9 mile left to go the promenade undulates over the rocks, thankfully though, not at violently as the waves continued to as they pounded the coastline. The choppy water caused quite impressive collections of foam to gather in faults in the geology that the waves had exposed over time. Some of the foam that was being whipped up by the wind, flew into the air, narrowly missing us on a couple of occasions.

Over 2 hours into our walk the path turned south for the last time and Kill-moral-oot was out of sight for good. Instead we had the view of Bangor Harbour, and the town spread out behind it.

It was a warming sight as we made it to the cafe by the famous Bangor Pickie pool, the Swan boats and miniature railway at Bangor's Pickie Family Fun Park. We were given a lovely welcome and congratulations by some folks working for the hospice and we received a wee badge and certificate to say we’d completed it.

From there and with our hair set into some kind of crazy position from one of those styling mousse adverts, we headed for some food in a cafe up by the train station and then made our way back to Belfast. In the city centre, many a Polish fan were wearing their red and white merchandise, getting ready to see Norn Iron beat Polska 3-2 in the World Cup Qualifying game at Windsor later in the day.

As for our efforts we got home and were just a little, well... Wind-sore, especially our faces. After a warm bath and giving our legs a break though, we’re now good to sit back and thank everyone again for sponsoring us and helping us raise the sum of £140 £194.62 £213.85 that will go towards helping to continue the great work they do at the Northern Ireland Hospice. Hopefully we’ll be able to do something similar next year.

If anyone would like to know more about the Northern Ireland Hospice and the work they do, is interested in donating or maybe even taking part in any events, please do visit their website at http://www.nihospice.org/

Google's Street View of Belfast

The Streets of Belfast have gone global with Google Street View. From Larne to Lisburn and just about all the streets in-between, we’re all just a click away from roaming the fair-weather streets of Belfast and the surrounding area from the warming comfort of the t’internet.

As reported widely in the press and on other blogger's pages over the past day, 25 cities in the U.K finally got their unveiling to the t’interweb. According to the Timesonline
we’ve been held back in seeing Belfast and other UK cities on google due to the inclement weather. From memory, we hardly got two consecutive dry days to be able to cut the grass last year. No doubt they had great fun trying to find days to drive around and capture the images of some dry Northern Irish streets.

Judging from building works and things I recognise, these first 360 degree snapshots look to have been conceived by camera around 9 months ago. So the images were probably taken around the end of June to the end of July. Making for a pretty regular summertime view of Union Jacks and vertical tricolours on many streets. A lot of the photos also seem to have been captured on a morning or a Sunday. This was probably to cut down on the amount of faces and registration plates to blur out, which is fair enough, but it does seem to make the streets look slightly abandoned.

I’m sure all of us who live and/or work on a street covered have already checked out home and work or have tried to spot yourself or things belonging to people you know. Dave Gorman, in his blog didn’t take long to pin down when he saw the Google van roll past him in London.

The next question, after the initial hype, is what use is it going to be? Well as I mentioned just last week in my blog about our recent trip to Paris, it’s pretty handy if you’ve never been somewhere before, to get a grip of your bearings. Prior to even leaving the house to go to the airport we knew what shops were on the road of the hotel and what the hotel looked like. So now anyone coming to visit Belfast can visit their hotel before they get here, which on the plus side means we probably won’t get stopped and asked for directions as often by eccentric tourists but on the downside we won’t get stopped and asked for directions as often by eccentric tourists.

For us folks already living here I can see it being great for looking up a place before going for a job interview or as we did today, checking out the shop frontage of a take away to make a judgement call on the likelihood of food poisoning. A look before you leap tactic might come in handy for many other things though its always worth considering that it’s bound to be a lot wetter when you’re really there and the pictures could be up to a year out of date. In Belfast that means the changing skyline is already making the images released into the public domain today dated. Like Google Earth’s over head images they’ll no doubt re-new them every so often.

Possibly by the end of the year Belfast should be joined by some other areas on this island. Word is that the Google cameras will soon be taking to the streets of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford. So if you know anyone living in those areas that might want to tidy up their garden? Do let them know they’ve not got long.

Right, time for a virtual wander to find some streets I didn’t realise existed, Woohoo!

Happy Irish day

St Patrick’s day, a day off, good times! My 17th March was a nice and relaxed one. The few ‘Irish’ themed things I did do were to: 1) Drink a couple of cans of Irish Stout - I have to admit that this one isn’t all that uncommon. 2) Catch a few minutes of the Gaelic football’s Schools (MacRory) Cup final, something I doubt I’ll ever intentionally repeat, it’s not really a sport I’ll ever enjoy the spectacle of but then I don’t really like Aussie rules or Rugby either. 3) Eat some soda bread pizzas for dinner.

Most of my day though was just spent in bed recovering from an extra long day at work yesterday, an hour at the Gym and doing things around the house like washing up and recovering from the treadmill.

A lot of folks around these parts and likely across the Atlantic will probably have spent a fair part of the day celebrating St Patrick and all things Irish. Those with a Catholic faith will probably have spent a wee part of the day at mass. An awful lot more people around the world however probably just celebrated the tie to anything remotely Irish with a drink in one hand and some green decorations of some form on their person. That’s just the modern day slant the day has taken on and in my opinion it’s not such a bad thing. Take me for instance, my only tie to St Patrick would be that like me he hailed from across the Irish Sea somewhere and (although under very different circumstances) found himself living around the same part of this island.

Me and any of the growing number of non-religious people who live on this island (be they born here or not) can’t get away from the fact society has been controlled for so long and is still strongly influenced even today (both north and south of the border) by religious institutions and people . *insert rant about why Church and State shouldn’t mix*. In your eyes, be that a good or bad thing (though its bad in mine) it means for those of us who don’t have ties to Catholicism or any denomination of the Christian church, that the day is very much celebrated in the sense of celebrating the good in Ireland that has spread from the folks who live here now and from those who left its shores in the past.

I love so much to do with this island. Namely its natural beauty, the people (who aren’t trying to kill or inflict pain or enforce their views on each other), the soccer (mainly the Irish league but the Eircom isn’t too bad either) and of course its beverages. Sure that’s why I got in the stout even though I’m trying not to drink so often, I tried to watch a bit of Gaelic football even though I don’t find it entertaining and we made sure today’s dinner was soda bread pizza.

The writers of the St Patrick’s Day Simpsons episode shown earlier on Sky1 ahead of the screening over in the States went that way, bringing things closer to reality. The Irish were portrayed to have gotten with the 21st century, including some adorable gay leprechauns and the brilliantly named Derry Air airlines. I lol’ed lots.

Sadly though some folks, as usual, take it too far. There’s one thing having a drink and a good time but all too often (in the now infamous area that is the Holylands where students and residents try to live side by side) the combination of mainly students with no respect for alcohol and people with no respect for other people + an excuse to throw a party ends up in law and order being broken. 12 people were arrested.

So in the 21st Century, we have a day off where all things Irish (hopefully Northern as well as Southern) can be celebrated and that to me is a good thing. I guess in reality we’ll never know if St Patrick was indeed worthy of representing by name the heritage of a people and a culture. After all it’s unlikely to be ever proved if the ‘snakes’ he was supposed to have purged from these shores were literal or metaphorical. I would though add there are no records of there ever having been any native snakes since the last ice age so it’s for sure not out of the realms of possibility that all he managed to evict was part of a different culture and belief system. In the grand scheme of things who knows if it was a good or bad thing to introduce Christianity to these shores but at any rate you can't change the past. All we do know is it did happen and he's credited with it by the anscestors who have followed on those traditions. We can but make the most of what we have in the here and now.

I’m still holding out though for a public holiday a bit more meaningful to me that I really would go all out with and throw a big party for. Maybe one day the powers that be in the world will finally do something meaningful that we can all help with, that could be celebrated worldwide in the name of humanity, a shared cause that would benefit the people of every country and that we could all feel a part of. Until then I’ll make the most of days like today with soda bread pizza, stout and a day off work.