Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

The drive today was from Galway to Ennistymon and carried us past the famous Cliffs of Moher (Aillte an Mhothair). Naturally, we stopped off there to walk along the cliffs, take photos and grab a quick bite to eat.

It was a lovely sunny day today, at least in the morning. The cliffs were at their best and the Aran Islands were clearly visible across the sea.

Just before reaching Ennistymon, we passed through Liscannor (Lios Ceannúir), a town where Sarah stayed about ten years ago when she was on a long weekend break with a colleague. We found the B & B and pub that she so fondly remembered, but the pub served no food and so we continued to our final stop for the day.

Ennistymon (Inis Diomáin) doesn’t have a lot going on. The main attraction comes in the shape of the rapids of the River Inagh, called the Cascades. These murky brown waters roar quite impressively past the town, forming a nice backdrop for a couple of hotels and eateries, ours included.

We’re spending just one night here. Tomorrow sees us travel further south to the town of Dingle (An Daingean), located on the peninsula of the same name in Co. Kerry (Contae Chiarraí).

Dingle is located in a Gaeltacht area, which should be a fun experience.

We’ve made it as far as Galway (Gaillimh) and we’re at the end of a two day stay here.

The drive from just outside of Donegal Town to Roundstone (Cloch na Rón) took us past some fantastic scenery and into the heart of Connemara (Conamara).

It also took us past the majestic Kylemore Abbey, where we certainly would have liked to stop if we’d had more time. That remains for a return trip.

Roundstone is a lovely little town with a picturesque harbour. We stayed at the equally lovely St. Joseph’s B & B and had dinner at O’Dowd’s Restaurant, who served up some very tasty fish.

Roundstone and the surrounding area turned out to have problems with their water quality. This has apparently been the situation since at least March, which is when residents were first informed.

The problem is that there are trace quantities of cryptosporidium in the water. Other than diarrhoea, this stuff’s not going to do you much harm, but the advice was to boil water before use, even for brushing teeth. Thankfully, the landlady of our B & B had laid on bottles of boiled water on each landing.

Roundstone is on the edge of an Irish-speaking region and, sure enough, when we left the next day, it was only a few minutes before we passed the unmistakeable An Gaeltacht sign at the side of the road, denoting that we were entering an area where Irish is the primary language.

It was another beautiful drive. As usual, we went out of our way to take a scenic route along the coast.

Galway is a breath of fresh air after Dublin, the only other large city we’ve been to in the republic. It hasn’t yet sold its soul to commercialism, although one has to wonder whether Galway isn’t also destined for chronic dilution by the tsunami of globalisation (or the voracious appetite of the Celtic Tiger, if you prefer). The city has already swollen past its borders and partially subsumed the adjacent Gaeltacht area, which means that house prices are rising and native Irish speakers are having to leave the area and settle in other, invariably English-speaking areas. This is obviously bad for the indigenous language.

Cities all over the world are afflicted by the same plight. It seems that anywhere worth living is, sooner or later, destined to become a victim of its own success, as people and commerce flock to it. Galway is very strongly affected, though, and is Ireland’s fastest growing city. It’s not hard to see why.

Anno 2008, Galway is still a lovely place, full of charming little cafés with terraces from which to bask in the sun (assuming you see any), and pubs galore, most of which play host to traditional Irish music most days of the week.

It’s really busy here this week, because the Galway Races are taking place. It’s the busiest week of the year for the city and finding a hotel was quite hard.

The weather remains hit or miss. We’ve had a couple of good soakings over the last couple of days, but we don’t let it dampen our spirits.

Tomorrow, we leave for Ennistymon (Inis Diomáin) in Co. Clare (Contae an Chláir).

We now have the rest of our trip mapped out and hotels reserved for all but one night of our stay. We’ve also booked our return ferry crossing from Rosslare to Fishguard and our tunnel crossing from Folkestone to Calais.

This aspect is, without a doubt, the single biggest pain in the arse of determining one’s route on a day by day basis, as opposed to planning and booking the whole trip at home before one’s bags are even packed. It can take a lot of research and many phone calls to book just a single night’s accommodation. That’s what you get for wanting a dynamic holiday, smack bang in the middle of high season.

I suspect we won’t have Internet access again until 3rd August, but we may get lucky in the interim.

We’ve been on the road for a month now, but to me, it feels like much less. I definitely don’t feel as if I’ve been away from home for some 30 days. Another dozen or so and then we’ll be back in Amsterdam, the school summer holiday behind us.

Like the weather, Lucas continues to be hit or miss on this trip. Sometimes, we can drive 300 km with nary a peep out of him. Other days, 75 km is a painful, drawn-out activity.

Eloïse has taken to calling Lucas the grunt-rabbit. We have no idea why. Similarly, she has started calling herself the toverschaap (magic sheep), me the hippopotamus (but since today, the elephant), and Sarah the froggie. We have no idea which, if any, associations these names have for her.

Since I last wrote, we’ve covered quite a bit of ground.

After leaving Belfast, we drove north, continuing our anti-clockwise tour of the island.

The northern coast is lovely. As soon as you leave Belfast, you arrive in Carrickfergus (Carraig Fhearghais) and find yourself on the coast. The scenery only gets better from that point forward.

We stopped at the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, a 20m long, 1m wide construction that spans the chasm between the sea cliffs and the tiny island of Carrick-a-Rede. It’s a must-see/must-do kind of experience.

The views along the 20 minute walk from the car park are stunning and, even though you’ll probably need to queue to cross the bridge when you get to it, it’s well worth braving the hordes for.

That evening, we stayed at the Causeway Hotel, located right next to the cliffside walk that leads to the world-famous [Giant’s

Causeway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant’s_Causeway) (Clochán na bhFómharac). There was no time that day to see the causeway, though; the plan was to spend the night in close proximity, thereby giving ourselves a good chance to get down there ahead of the masses the next morning.

The plan worked. The Causeway Hotel could have been a better experience; the rooms are in need of some attention and the same could be said to apply to the table service. It’s a grand old building, though, with the potential to be a fantastic place to stay, rather than just a place to stay.

Anyway, the cliffside walk to the Giant’s Causeway the next day afforded us fantastic views of the causeway down below. Even by the time we got down there, it was only busy, not yet swarming with people.

When the left the hotel’s car park to continue our journey, attendants were not letting any more cars enter the causeway car park, because it was full to bursting and new cars were arriving every minute. If you don’t get there before lunch, you’re too late.

The weather had turned, too, and it had started to drizzle. Our cliffside walk and time on the causeway had been in the sun, a rare treat on this trip.

Lunch was in a fabulous little place, just up the road in Ballintoy (Baile an Tuaigh) harbour. I think it was called Roark’s Kitchen. I had a delicious Irish stew there, followed by a delicious piece of lumpy bumpy, a creamy cake.

At the end of the day, we arrived in Derry, a.k.a. Londonderry (Doire). There was some kind of international youth football tournament going on that week, so we’d had a hard time finding a hotel. Consequently, we were staying a few kilometres out

of town.

We didn’t get to see Derry until the next morning, but what a lovely surprise it was.

Derry is a charming walled city, with a very chequered history. From the Siege of Derry to 1969’s three day Battle of the Bogside, this city has seen a lot of strife. Like Belfast, it had a more or less recurring spot on the evening news when I was growing up; and what was being reported, of course, was never positive.

I wanted to drive over to the Bogside district, so I set the sat-nav for the junction of Fahan Street and Rossville Street and off we went.

As with the Falls and the Shankhill in West Belfast, what immediately strikes you is how close the Bogside is to the centre of town. almost all of what was the Bogside at the height of The Troubles is now gone; only a gable daubed with the slogan You Are Now Entering Free Derry still stands.

Plaques abound here, many placed to mark the death of someone murdered by the British Army on that very spot. All too often, the plaque’s text details the shooting of a child.

Murals abound here, some placed by the IRA, but most these days painted by the Bogside Artists. These murals are very striking and a real treat to behold. Most of them commemorate key events during The Troubles, such as Bloody Sunday and Operation Motorman.

Bloody Sunday is the notorious day on 30th January 1972 that the British army opened fire on unarmed civilian demonstrators, murdering fourteen of them. Many of them were shot in the back as they attempted to flee the mayhem. Six of them were aged only seventeen. This is the subject of U2’s well known song, Sunday Bloody Sunday. No-one was ever held accountable for the shootings.

The Bloody Sunday Monument subtly commemorates this tragic event, which not only directly caused the death of so many innocent people, but also indirectly caused the death of many more, by causing the ranks of the IRA to swell with new volunteers.

Just across the street is a stone monument to the IRA hunger strikers. It’s H-shaped, representative of cell block H, which is the infamous wing of the prison where the inmates were held.

I spent quite a bit of time at the Bogside Artists Studio, talking to one of the artists. He was quite the raconteur and regaled us with eye-widening tales of his life during The Troubles. One can only try to imagine what it must have been like to see what he saw and experience what he did.

That was our last day in Northern Ireland. The next day, we crossed back into the republic and headed north west to Dunfanaghy (Dún

Fionnachaid), a small town right on the coast of Co. Donegal.

Dunfanaghy is beautiful; there’s no two ways about it. New houses are being built everywhere, as demand for the views around here must be high. Who knows if they’re actually being sold any more, though? The housing slump has supposedly hit Ireland very hard.

The next day, we drove south along a long and winding route that took us over the amazingly beautiful Glengesh Pass and to the breathtakingly sheer Slieve League (Sliabh Liag) cliffs, the latter of which are quite reminiscent of parts of Iceland and the Faroe Islands (which is hardly surprising, when you think about it).

This long, long (or so it felt) drive brought us to the outskirts of Ragh(e)y, a small place just outside of Donegal Town (Dún na nGall). We’re

staying at Coxtown Manor, a hideaway recommended to me by my good friend and former office-mate, Peter. This lovely old manor house is charming, atmospheric and, above all, quiet. It’s set well back from the road and is a veritable oasis of tranquility.

The place is run by a Fleming, so the food is an interesting mix of Belgian and Irish cuisine. The room rates, however, are overpriced for what you get; and dinner yesterday was a drawn-out affair, at which we were severely under-dressed, although no-one seemed to care. Eloïse ended up going to bed far too late, so we opted out of dinner this evening and had it in Donegal

Town instead.

Our bed, too, creaks and squeaks like a rusty hinge and the Manor’s Web site misleadingly suggests that all of the rooms have Internet access, which is most certainly not the case. I have to sit in the bar in order to post this entry.

But the Internet is not why we’re here and it’s only for a couple of nights, anyway. Mostly, we just need sporadic access in order to book hotels a couple of nights ahead. Don’t forget that we’re in high season on this trip, and booking hotels just a couple of days in advance in the most popular regions of Ireland is proving tricky.

Tomorrow, we drive on through the counties of Sligo (Contae Shligigh) and Mayo (Contae Mhaigh Eo) to the

small town of Roundstone (Cloch na Rón). It’s a long drive, which will place us squarely on the west coast of Ireland.

We feel that we’re moving around Ireland too quickly to be able to do it justice, but we’ve opted to do that instead of touring a smaller area more intensively. After all, we don’t know when we’ll be back.

Another reason for the pace is the weather, which hasn’t been great. Today was sunny again, but we can count the sunny days over the last few weeks on one hand. Most days see some rain, but it’s mostly confined to passing showers. We’re thankful for small mercies; we could be rained out completely. We’re more or less used to the cloudy days and mild temperatures. Today’s 21°C or so felt several degrees warmer to us.

So, it’s with regret that we can’t spend at least a few nights in each county, including the inland ones, where far fewer tourists are found. We would have also liked to get out to the Aran Islands (Oileáin Árann) and some of the others, such as Tory Island (Toraigh), but the weather is too unpredictable and you need a few days on these

islands to do them justice. That’s time we simply don’t have, as we do need to get back to Amsterdam some time around 10th August.

Still, that leaves us with another couple of weeks to take in some more sights, so we have little to complain about.

It’s been a good stay in Belfast; mostly dry.

Tomorrow, we move on and head to the famous Giant’s Causeway (Clochán na bhFómharach).

We’ll overnight in the area and then move on to Derry (Doire) (a.k.a. Londonderry) for a couple of nights. We’ll probably have no access to the Internet until at least after Derry.

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.