Belfast

The drive from Dublin to Belfast took most of the day, due to a long stop in Brú na Bóinne.

Brú na Bóinne is one of Europe’s largest and most important megalithic sites, and contains 60% of all the neolithic art known to exist in Europe. As such, we just had to stop and take in the two sites that are open to the public, namely Knowth (Cnobha) and Newgrange (Dún Fhearghusa).

A small bus takes you back and forth from the visitor centre to each site. At Knowth, you get to go on top of the main mound, whilst at Newgrange, you actually get to go inside the main one. You can visit just one site, but I recommend going to both if you have the time.

You do need plenty of time, though. We didn’t leave the visitor centre until about 18:00, which meant that it would be 20:00 before we reached Belfast (Béal Feirste) and the Ten Square Hotel. The road ahead was mostly dual carriageway, but also included fairly long sections in which it receded to single lane traffic.

A few kilometres outside of Belfast, we joined the M1 and that brought us speedily into the city. Given the lateness of the hour, we opted for dinner at the hotel’s own restaurant, the extremely popular and loud Grill Room. In spite of the noise, I recommend the restaurant, as the food and service were very good. The atmosphere was really nice, too.

We knew we’d be arriving in Belfast in the evening, which is why we’ve booked three nights here in total. That effectively gives us two complete days in which to tour the city.

And so to Belfast, a city whose very name, as I was growing up on the British mainland — a place that may as well have been a million miles away — conjured up images in my mind of war-torn streets patrolled by British soldiers, burning cars, children killed by plastic bullets, dereliction and despair.

Not now, though. If you never left the city centre, you might never suspect what went on here until just a few years ago. You don’t have to go far, though, to find the smouldering remains of a feud that is merely dormant, not dead.

We took one of the now famous black taxi cab tours of West Belfast this morning. Our taxi was actually white, but it didn’t seem to have an impact on the quality of the tour.

The first thing that strikes you as an outsider is just how close the troubled Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods actually are to the centre of the city. From the town hall, you could walk to them in half an hour; 45 minutes tops.

Even if you felt inclined to walk, however, or had your own vehicle like us, taking a taxi is definitely the better option. It may also be the most expensive option, with tours at around £25 – £35, but what you’re paying for is not the view from the car window or the opportunity to get out and take photos. No, the unique selling point of the tour is that the background to the troubles is contextualised in a way that only a local could. You get the facts, the background and the perspective of someone who lived through the troubles on either the Catholic or Protestant side of the fence.

And I’m not talking about a figurative fence, either. As soon as you head west from the centre, the ominous and forbidding peace lines loom up as a backdrop to the houses. It’s an utterly bizarre sight.

Then, just as you’re thinking about what it means to live in segregation on one side of the wall, you realise you’re on the Falls Road (Bóthar na bhFál), the main thoroughfare through the west of the city and the very heart of the republican Catholic community.

The taxi stops and you find yourself looking at republican murals. Many of them relate directly to the conflict, but many of them pledge solidarity with other groups seen to be similarly oppressed, such as the ETA and the Palestinians.

Further on up the road, a mural depicting the unmistakeable face of Bobby Sands looms up on the right. It quickly becomes apparent that the mural graces the side of Sinn Féin‘s headquarters. The Irish tricolour ripples in the breeze.

A right turn and just a few metres up the road lies one of the gates through the peace line. Through that opening lies the neighbourhood of the loyalist Protestant community.

The gates that allow passage across the peace lines are all closed after dark, which supposedly allows each community to sleep more soundly, knowing that the other is locked in for the night. It’s a fragile sense of security, though, because the peace lines merely draw a line between the two communities. It’s still possible to go around the walls where they end.

It’s another world on the other side of that gate. Unions Jacks fill your field of vision: on bunting banners across the Shankill Road (Bóthar na Seanchille) and on flagpoles affixed to people’s houses. The Ulster Banner and other such flags are also prominently flown.

The reason for all of the flags and the red, white and blue painted kerb stones is the recent 12th July celebrations. The decorations typically remain in place until the end of August.

Driving around the side streets off Shankill Road, the surreality deepens. Mural after mural appears before you, some mild and poignant, others quoting Oliver Cromwell’s calls for the extermination of Catholicism; and a few glorifying the murderous careers of deceased (of course), prominent loyalist thugs.

It’s impossible for me to understand the maniacal hatred that leads anyone to glorify such figures.

Who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed? Are the IRA terrorists or freedom fighters? Is this terrorism, an ethnic conflict or a guerilla war? There seem to me to be few facts here, merely opinions.

Before you know it, you’re back in the centre of Belfast, sanity has returned and all that lingers is a profound, saddening state of disbelief that ordinary men and women let it come to this.

The final balance: 3524 dead.

The rest of the day was spent walking around Belfast. It’s a nice city, rejuvenated by large development projects that have regenerated large areas of the city; due in no small part to huge EU cash influxes. It seems they have spent the money wisely and it’s all I can do to try to imagine how the city must have looked just ten or twenty years ago.

Tomorrow’s our last day in Belfast before moving on. We haven’t yet decided what to do tomorrow; nor, indeed, where we’ll go when we leave Belfast.

One thing’s for sure: this has been the highlight of the trip so far for me. What I saw and heard today brought to life a conflict that had always been very remote to me. I now feel affected by it, albeit it in a very small way compared to the people who actually lived through it.