Our
final day of the rail tour left from Connolly Station in the busier part of
Dublin. Connolly serves the lines to the
north whereas trains leave Heuston for the south and west of Ireland. This all dates back to the private rail
companies that built the lines in the mid-1800s. That’s why London has almost as many
terminals as it does tube stations.
We
headed north along the coast for much of the trip which was just lovely. As always, I requested seats on the right side
of the train to favour Peter’s good eye.
Remember that if you’re ever heading north out of Dublin; left side if
you’re headed in.
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| The Causeway Coastal Route - Antrim Coast |
We
really should have planned a few days either side of our rail tour, that way we
could have spent time exploring Dublin before we set off and then finished with
a day of two in Belfast before flying onward from there. As it was we were met by a coach at Belfast
Central and whisked straight off to the Causeway Coastal Route, along Northern
Ireland’s Antrim Coast without so much of a mention of The Troubles but much
ado about two flogging big cranes on the Belfast docks. Who will ever forget Sampson and Goliath?
Old
Stan was quite beside himself at the sight though. He might have retired to the Garden City of
Toowoomba but he still loves a dockyard and before we knew it he had a clenched
fist in the air and was singing the Internationale. This was more about Fred and Wilma than
anything else, especially Stan’s singing ability, but Adela managed to settle
him down after a couple of stanzas. Fred
and Wilma were clueless so no harm done.
Having
cleared Belfast the coast was a treat.
We passed through a series of fishing villages with stunning views of
the Irish Sea to the right and the mountains or the Glens of Antrim to the
left. You can even glimpse the Scottish coast on a clear day and of course a
clear day it was! It seemed only
reasonable that we should see Scotland from Northern Ireland having seen
Ireland from Wales. Now we need to see
Malaysia from Singapore during our stopover in the later on our way home, it’s
a must-do!
We
stopped at the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge which crosses to a 23m-deep and
20m-wide chasm between the mainland and Carrick-a-Rede Island. Fishermen originally built it to check their
salmon nets but now it just traps tourists.
It also makes you feel as if that allusive extra orifice that’s situated
somewhere along you perineum is about to open up and
evacuate the entire contents of your body before your skin turns inside-out and
disappears through it as well. I’m sure
you’ve experienced the feeling at some point!
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| Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge |
With
all our bits and pieces tucked safely back in again it was off to Dunluce
Castle for a photo stop before arriving at the Giant’s Causeway for two hours
of clambering about. Now that I’ve seen
tessellated basalt columns in Tasmania, Iceland and Ireland I reckon I’m pretty
much up to pace on the subject but I’m always interested to hear a bit more
about geology as well as a legend or two.
Our
guide for the day was extremely knowledgeable and remarkably polite. Her mere mention of a geological age of 50-60
million years sent Wilma’s creationist nostrils flaring and Fred was
none-too-impressed about the tale of Fionn mac Cumhaill and his similarly gigantic
mate Benandonner from Scotland and the barney they had somewhere along their
purpose-built causeway. “Demons!” he shouted,
“Demons!” We all moved on though, albeit
with a few muffled chuckles from Stan who reminded us that Fred had said the
same about leprechauns.
 |
| The Giant's Causeway |
As it
happened we did manage a bit of a turn about Belfast on our way back to the
station. We spotted the odd wall or two
and a good many murals which are mostly benign these days but one or two of
them still indicate just what kind of tormenting bastards some protestants can
be. Leave it alone for Christ’s sake -
literally!
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| This Belfast mural is almost certainly on the side of a protestant house |
Once
back to Dublin our tour came to an end.
Peter and I said a polite farewell to Fred and Wilma then went for a
Guinness or three with Raewin, Cheryl, Stan and Adela to celebrate the end of
our LGBTI+Communist rail tour. We hit
the Brazen Head which is the oldest pub in Ireland dating back to 1198. They also served meals until late which was a
plus. I could have had glazed bacon and
cabbage or perhaps a Clonakilty black pudding salad but I settled on the kale
and quinoa burger, much as you might expect.
Peter
and I vowed to sleep in until 8 o’clock next morning and enjoy a more leisurely
breakfast than usual before doing Dublin.
Dublin
Part of
the deal with Railtours Ireland included a two-day pass on one of those
hop-on-hop-off red bus businesses around Dublin although sadly, we only had
enough time to use half of that. Having
shunned such things in London on both our first and second visits as being far
too touristy we did indulged ourselves in Cambridge, Bath, Edinburgh and
Glasgow across both trips given the brevity of our time in each place and found
them quite informative and a good way to see a city when you’re on a tight
schedule.
That said,
it appears that dozens of people were hung, drawn and quartered, burned at the
stake, or subjected to any and every combination of the aforementioned at every
major intersection in and around Edinburgh which has rather coloured my memory
of that particular city. Glasgow, a day
or two later seemed much less brutal.
It
takes the best part of two hours to do the complete circuit in Dublin so given
that we only had a day we remained glued to our seats on the open upper deck of
the bus for the first time around whilst I ticked off prospective stopping points
for the second circuit and we had a most wonderful day. Our good friend Lin from Durham had already recommended
the Guinness Storehouse Brewery near Stop 8 and having now been there I concur
with her completely. Of course my aging
bladder made finding toilets from that point onward a bit of a challenge but
not one which was insurmountable. I have
a thing about visiting parliaments and they had plenty there, as they must.
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| Dáil Éireann - Assembly of Ireland |
So back
to Guinness, we finished our evening at the Temple Bar then retired to our
hotel to prepare for an obscenely early 9.00am flight to Newcastle on Aer Lingus. I bet you expected me to make a joke about
that! There was a slightly later Ryan
Air flight but my sciatica completely precluded standing throughout the
journey, relatively short though it was.
I’m happy to reveal that even though I failed maths in the 1970 NSW HSC
(math if you’re American) and have not studied it since despite two more years
at high school and seven at university, even I could work out that a cheap
flight plus €90 for two pieces of checked baggage is no bargain. Then there’s the pay-for-use toilet which
takes me right back to the bladder shrinkage.
And by
the way, my latest blood work showed that I have the PSA of a 27 year-old but
unfortunately nothing else. No,
seriously, it’s all good too so don’t worry.
What we have here is an extraordinary example of the triumph of genetics
over effort.
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