[YEAR 7!] Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

[lightcycle]

Belfast Castle! Basically checking off the "Top 10 things to do in Belfast"

Just an average run-of-the-mill castle within the city limits. But we quickly discovered the garden was full of cats!

Some are in plain sight, some are hidden. Some are in the form of sculptures, others in mosaic. Some are even in the form of shrubbery!

These are my favorite kinds of cats. The ones I'm not allergic to!

We only found out after our visit that there are nine cats in total hiding in the garden. We weren't really looking for them at the time and managed to find five. Legend has it that visitors to the castle will have good luck if there's a white cat living there. So to celebrate the legend, the garden full of hidden cats was created. Good fun for kids and motorcycle riders looking to kill time!

 

[lightcycle]

But now it's off to see what I was really interested in. We rode out of the city and into the suburbs of Belfast.

Belfast is a divided city, with English Protestants and Irish Catholics clustered in self-contained neighbourhoods. Violence between the two factions have been ongoing for over a century now, ever since war broke out between Irish separatists in 1919, leading to Ireland leaving Great Britain in 1922.

I became aware of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland when I was barely a teen. U2 was on the radio and the most popular song at the time was, "Sunday, Bloody Sunday". Bono wrote the song about the Bloody Sunday massacre of unarmed civil rights protesters by British troops in 1972 in Derry, near the Irish border.

I was only a kid at the time, but that song made me realize that there was a whole world full of stuff happening outside of my suddenly much smaller existence.

Walls were erected in some of the more problematic neighbourhoods where Catholic neighbourhoods butted up against Protestant neighborhoods

We visited a park where children were playing soccer, joggers were running on the paths, and barbed wire tipped the fences that separated Catholics from Protestants.

It floored me to realize this was not a historical remnant. This is present day life in Belfast.

Every night, the gates would close and be locked up, to prevent night-time violence between the two communities

 

[lightcycle]

We rode out to one of the Protestant subdivisions. The flags on all the houses left no doubt which neighbourhood you were in

A group of young men were gathered outside of one of the houses and watched as we rode by. Despite our Canadian-plated motorcycles (and a British passport tucked somewhere deep inside one of my panniers), I still felt a bit uneasy. All of this nationalist imagery surrounding us made everything a bit more menacing.

Murals cover the sides of many of the houses, depicting violent events in the history of "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland

1969 marked the peak of the violence, when British troops were sent in to Northern Ireland to quell the violence. This lead to the resuscitation of the nascent Irish Republican Army (IRA) in retaliation. Although there was supposed to be a ceasefire in 1994, some of the murals disturbingly commemorate deaths much later than that date - neighbours that had been killed in the local skirmishes between Catholics and Protestants.

I saw little kids playing among the buildings, with these murals watching over them. It was very sad to think that they were being indoctrinated into this ceaseless cycle of hate and revenge. I always thought these paintings were Belfast's scars. But they're not. They're clamps holding the wound open so the city never heals.

A lone mural called, "The Women's Quilt" celebrates Love and Forgiveness amidst all the hatred and vengeance

 

[lightcycle]

We rode to one of the Peace Walls on Shankill Road

Erected in 1969, a number of Peace Walls were built along public roads to contain the violence between the Irish and English communities. They were only supposed to be a temporary measure at the time, and were due to be torn down within 6 months. They are still standing today. And the gates close every night.

More murals adorn the Peace Wall

The murals on the Irish side depict the usual Irish-flag waving rebels and...
African-American historical figures, Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama?!?

A large part of the Irish struggle is against the systemic racism by the British. There is a close identification with African-Americans and the abolitionist movement to end slavery in America.

Obama is *very* popular in Ireland.

The wall and its murals really reminded us of when we visited the Berlin Wall

 

[lightcycle]

Heading over to the Catholic neighbourhoods

Very different imagery on the Irish side. Lot more greens.

Suddenly, that British passport seems to be burning a hole in my pannier. I'm doing a lot of nervous gulping around here. Then it dawned on me: Northern Ireland is still a part of Great Britain. *Everybody* here, Catholics and Protestants, have British passports...

And that's the root of the problem for half the population here. Duh.

IRA mural painted above a store

 

[lightcycle]

We stopped so I could take more pictures of the murals. When I returned, I saw a group of kids talking to Neda about her motorcycle. She let the kids sit on her bike. Over the intercom, I heard one of them ask her, "Can you turn the bike on?"

Alarmed, I spoke into her ear, "DO NOT PUT THE KEY IN THE BIKE! They'll ride off with it!"

She came back over the intercom, "I've worked with kids before. I'm not an idiot, you know."

Some of the kids are fiddling around with the switches on the bike. I hear Neda gently admonish them, "No no, don't do that"

She said it in the exact same way she talked to the kids at her old job. As we rode away, I mimicked her tone of voice over the comms: "No no, don't do that". We had a good laugh. They were good kids.

But they would have totally rode away with her bike if she had left the key in.

Back across one of the other Peace Walls

What a long friggin' day. Is it 4PM yet?

Are we allowed back into our AirBnB room now?

 

[wildorange]

Belfast is very much a changing city these days, primarily focusing on tourism.

Good to see your taking in the sights, the market is very popular indeed and did you visit Stormont?

Safe travels to you both.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[profdlp]

Good to see more updates. I hope you got into your room OK!

 

[lightcycle]

Good to see your taking in the sights, the market is very popular indeed and did you visit Stormont?

No, we didn't get to visit Stormont. Looks neat, though!

 

[lightcycle]

Good to see more updates. I hope you got into your room OK!

 

[lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/361.html

Leaving Belfast today. Not entirely rested. We're going to book a proper AirBnB place tonight where we can actually stay indoors for the entire day. And we're going to be sleeping in a new country tonight. Or at least that's the plan.

Outta the house before 9AM. We know the rules...

Unlike the sunny weather we enjoyed on our day off yesterday, it's looking pretty dismal for our ride out of town. Low clouds hang above our heads, thick and grey, expectant with water. So we leave with our rainsuits on. The mornings are getting too chilly to ride without them anyway.

We head towards a stretch of road called the A2, otherwise known as the Antrim Coast Road.

It's a delicious stretch of pavement that follows Northern Ireland's north shore and gives us stunning views of the North Channel

 

[lightcycle]

Not even an hour out of Belfast, Neda comes in over the comminicator, "We need to stop. I don't feel very well."

Oh no. As we slowed to pull over on the shoulder, I was going to ask her what exactly was wrong. But then I saw her reach into her backpack, grab a roll of toilet paper, climb over the low stone wall, and hurry quickly away from the road...

Oh.

So, while Neda is taking care of business, I do what I normally do. Take pictures. But not of her though...

Minutes pass. And then several more minutes later, I yell over the stone wall, "Everything ok?"

"Uh huh", came the weak reply.

I climb over the wall and walk over to her. She looks miserable.

So I do the only thing I know that comes naturally to me.

I take a picture.

"Noooo! You're not putting that on the Internet!"

"Ok ok. I promise."

Poor Neda. Getting the slurries while on the road really sucks.

We head out again.

 

[lightcycle]

At Cushendun Bay, we stop for a scenic break as the Glendun River opens out into the Straits of the North Channel

Near the marina, Neda feeds the ducks. One swan is dominating her attention though.

I take some glamour shots of the bikes, Cushendun Beach in the background.

The scenery is beautiful here

 

[lightcycle]

We take a little detour off the A2 and stay closer to the coast on Tor Road, passing through a quilt-work of green farmland.

Very picturesque!

Some entertaining twists and turns in the road

 

[lightcycle]

There's a popular lookout at the end of a dead end road called Torr Head

A dilapidated coast guard station stands at the top of Torr Head, and you can hike around it to get great views of the sea and shore below. There are a couple of other bikers walking around and we nod our heads to each other in acknowledgement. Their mouths are pursed when they do so, which is the International Bikers sign for: "Not a good day for a ride"...

The view from Torr Head. Spectacular!

We climb back on the bikes to head west along the top of the Antrim Coast Road, and as soon as we pull out of Torr Head, the rains slam down on top of our heads. Exactly like we knew it would. Sorry, no more pictures while riding in the rain. The road is slick and winding, so it's best to keep both hands on the handlebars - instead of taking blurry pictures of water droplets on the camera's lens.

Our next stop: Ballintoy Harbour, otherwise known as The Iron Islands on the Game of Thrones

Yes, another Game of Thrones shooting location. We've been all over Croatia and Spain visiting them, it's kind of become a theme for our European leg. Why stop now? Belfast is actually where one of the main production sound stages for the show is located.