The coast road to Whiskey Cottage
Apr. 21st, 2011 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustHome again, and reunited with the internet; it's late, but here's the next chapter of our travels, just to show willing.
It was a misty drive from Wigtown to the port at Cairnryan, past hillsides of gorse in bloom, and a misty crossing to Larne. We didn't linger in Larne, where all I remember is a forest of posters, about a third of them estate agents' 'for sale' signs, interspersed with election publicity urging the voters to number the recommended candidates in the preferred order (we'd keep seeing these throughout the week, and never quite got used to it).
This was my first visit to Northern Ireland, but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler was here fifty years ago, and remembered driving the coastal road from Larne. It's still memorable: to the left of the road it's like driving through the north Pennines, rough grassy hillsides dotted with sheep, golden with gorse and masses of primroses; but tumbling straight down to the sea on the right, with a distant lighthouse flashing in the haze.
We stopped in Carnlough, looked around the harbour, read the memorial to Paddy, the only Irish recipient of the Dickin prize, admired the bridge carrying the old mineral railway down to the harbour and decided that this was not the day to walk back up the line to the limestone quarry and the waterfall and went to the Londonderry Arms for lunch. I was still too full of Scottish breakfast to want more than a sandwich, but the egg sandwiches were excellent, as was the Guinness, and we were amused by the Londonderry connection (was the Marquess of Londonderry who had the harbour built for the export of limestone the same Marquess of Londonderry who built Seaham Harbour? Not necessarily...).
Shortly before our destination, the road climbed up away from the coast, out of the mist and gradually into the sunshine. This saw us down to the coast again at Ballycastle, where we stopped to admire a gleaming white sculpture of geese in flight*, and it was still mild and bright if not actually sunny when we arrived at Whiskey Cottage.
There was still enough daylight by the time we'd unpacked for a walk down the lane to the Giant's Causeway.
*That's what I thought at the time. Google confirms my later suspicion that they aren't geese at all but swans, the Children of Lir - and that one reason why they shone so white in the sunshine is that the sculpture is brand new. And yes, I took pictures, but I haven't sorted them out yet... (ETA: photo.)
It was a misty drive from Wigtown to the port at Cairnryan, past hillsides of gorse in bloom, and a misty crossing to Larne. We didn't linger in Larne, where all I remember is a forest of posters, about a third of them estate agents' 'for sale' signs, interspersed with election publicity urging the voters to number the recommended candidates in the preferred order (we'd keep seeing these throughout the week, and never quite got used to it).
This was my first visit to Northern Ireland, but
durham_rambler was here fifty years ago, and remembered driving the coastal road from Larne. It's still memorable: to the left of the road it's like driving through the north Pennines, rough grassy hillsides dotted with sheep, golden with gorse and masses of primroses; but tumbling straight down to the sea on the right, with a distant lighthouse flashing in the haze.We stopped in Carnlough, looked around the harbour, read the memorial to Paddy, the only Irish recipient of the Dickin prize, admired the bridge carrying the old mineral railway down to the harbour and decided that this was not the day to walk back up the line to the limestone quarry and the waterfall and went to the Londonderry Arms for lunch. I was still too full of Scottish breakfast to want more than a sandwich, but the egg sandwiches were excellent, as was the Guinness, and we were amused by the Londonderry connection (was the Marquess of Londonderry who had the harbour built for the export of limestone the same Marquess of Londonderry who built Seaham Harbour? Not necessarily...).
Shortly before our destination, the road climbed up away from the coast, out of the mist and gradually into the sunshine. This saw us down to the coast again at Ballycastle, where we stopped to admire a gleaming white sculpture of geese in flight*, and it was still mild and bright if not actually sunny when we arrived at Whiskey Cottage.
There was still enough daylight by the time we'd unpacked for a walk down the lane to the Giant's Causeway.
*That's what I thought at the time. Google confirms my later suspicion that they aren't geese at all but swans, the Children of Lir - and that one reason why they shone so white in the sunshine is that the sculpture is brand new. And yes, I took pictures, but I haven't sorted them out yet... (ETA: photo.)
