The Belfast Trip

Mersey and Dee estuaries from the air

The holidays were slipping away. I saw three free days between Manchester Carnival and  Northern Ballet; Fehmina and I discussed Barcelona Croatia Gdansk Budapest Bordeaux. She was checking out flights and hotels on our phones while I desperately attempted at least ten miles on the motorway back from Manchester Carnival [it didn't last].

me and Muriel

I am in Belfast. Managed to find two planes that didn't involve the crack of drawn, leaving from Leeds, returning to Manchester.

Muriel sat next to me on the flight over; she was still sitting next to me in the bus to the town Centre-. She discussed my next bus with the driver in a Does-she-take-sugar type of way. I'm sorry, she said, I was talking about you like you were my child. I happily conceded that in these circumstances I was her child, and she and the bus driver settled the route for me.

The entire bus queue for the 12a were clear that there no hotels on Cliftonville Road; the bus driver waited till I showed him where I was going on my iPad. Mary of Brackenberry was welcoming and my room was character from top to bottom, and my room was ground floor. Yippee!

I headed downtown to eat in Queens, the University Quarter. The Rough Guide recommended cafe did not live up to its seeding, but the Quarter and architecture was lovely. I walked back to town along Dublin Street, and at the 12a bus stop yet another passenger checked the bus times with me. Excellently friendly.

flags everywhere!

Wednesday is Giants Causeway Day. It is pouring and it is cold. It is August and I am wearing vest, polo, jumper, shirt, hoody, anorak, trousers and leggings [actually I wearing my entire holiday wardrobe]. Drawing the line at socks with sandals. Obviously.  

The RG highly recommended Visitor Centre did not have the expected cafe -according to one of its "helpers"!

(When me and Mig were in Iceland, after the magnificent falls, the magnificent cheesecake was another key feature). I saw later that the Causeway did do food. Too late.

So I am in the Nook, eating a goats cheese and red onion sandwich. Not attempting those basalt hexagons without sustenance! 

I take the easy cliff path route, with just a scary steep stepped bit. I only slip once. (You only break your leg once for these nerves to kick in forever.) The younger person who I had met on the bus from Port Rush advises me to take care. I contemplate pushing her back down the path. Take care! No, in the middle of nowhere I would skip down these rocks! Not! 

The silhouettes of the rocks at the edge of the promontories are lovely; I am taking too many pictures of the same one.. 

At first the Causeway seems small and underwhelming, but I press on and scale its slippery little heights. It is a wet windy cold day and the place is heaving; National Trust officials are blowing their whistles at the over adventurous kids. What a job, balancing for hours at a time on a rock shouting at tourists.

Back at the bus stop I meet the same girl yet again, and then the another two people who took the same bus from Port Rush to the Causeway. And then, more Twin Peaks than ever the same family was on the same train from Coleraine to Belfast. I smile; the grandma ignores me. She looked frazzled on the way here; she looks frazzled now on the way back. (I think that Beryl Bainbridge put her on the same train as me). 

I get off at Botanic and walk along Queens, give RG recommendations a second chance. This food was okay, at least staff were welcoming. Walk along Dublin and Bedford, just miss the 20 past 12a. As does Christopher, so we talk the half hour wait away. V nice.

Back chez nous, pass out.

Thursday, lie in, set off late for the adventure of the day. Which is 1. Finding green eyeliner in a chemists, and 2.. The open top bus ride tour of Belfast. The former was very exciting; the latter was a very curate's egg. Felt weird belting along the dual Carriageway past the airport, felt like an intruder at the Peaceline. The dockyards once so great are giving away to film sets and Titanic experiences. Not sure I would create a theme park about a ship famous for sinking. Apparently they say in Belfast that the boat was okay when it left them? Lol.

I also called in at the famous Crown, reeking with history and decorative ceilings, but not much with the atmosphere.

They are keen on George Best [understandably] in Belfast, and even named their city airport after him, but I did manage to find Alex Higgins [one of my all-time heroes] in one of the murals. Murals and flags are everywhere. 

Harland and Woolf

One feature of Northern Ireland is sudden heavy showers. One such happened as the open top neared home. Lol. Now, feeling wet and a bit unsettled, I went in search of tea and cake. But it was late and the tea and cake were closing. I headed for the station ( thinking cafe, maybe?) and ended up sitting on an empty bench outside an empty Waterfront Hall, wondering where the action, if any, was.

An American couple ask me if I knew where Holo was; I find it for them on my phone. They said, we're excessively grateful; I said it was a small thing. 

Setting off back to town and low and behold here is Holo aka The Barge. They were fully booked but let me have a cuppa at the bar. They must have had a thought and then said I could eat at the bar. By now I was past cake, and here is some with Irish gnocchi, mushrooms and asparagus. From exhaustion to heaven. Skip back to bus stop, get there 4 minutes before the 12A. 

cream tea in Café Creme

Pat and Calvin from-the-barge have recommended a day trip to Newcastle. The two hour bus ride is more homely than picturesque. Mary said Newcastle would be like Blackpool, but it was more Southport, and I sat in the deservedly RG recommended Café Crème and contemplated the Mountains of Mourne of which, in my childhood, my mother oft sang. This was not a warming memory (in case you think nostalgia is happening). 

So pleased I booked a 9 o'clock flight. I had a whole extra day holiday, and didn't have to rush for the plane. Well, as it turned out, the plane didn't rush for me either. Two hot hours later, I join the irate and now 10.50 flight to Manchester. 

I have missed my booked train, and also the following one, but there is still the 12.28. At the self-serve ticket place I offer to assist a fellow passenger with the infuriating infernal machines. Conal and I had been on the same plane, had both bought a couple cans from the airport Spar and were both celebrating being at last in the waiting room cafe and waiting for the last train. 

The last train came and went and scooped up all the passengers but two on Manchester Airport Train Station, both on the platform and in the waiting room. We never noticed. Lol! I opined that his was so funny that I couldn't even bring myself to be irritated. We cracked open another couple of bottles and made sure we caught the last train to Piccadilly. Here I lost my travelling companion, now I'll never know what his GCSE grades his son got [or for that matter what grades Muriel's son got!]

It was pouring in Manchester. The Britannia threatened £105; the Travelodge offered £55 and had a bar. I had a celebratory pint, but was far too hyper to fall asleep easily. In the morning I contemplated the rough sleepers near the hotel entrance and thought, with relief, that it could have been so much worse.

But I did also contemplate, not for the first time, how beautiful some of Manchester's buildings are.

Manchester - beautiful even in the rain

Next morning I took a late morning train to Leeds, and then slept through the Labour Party meeting at the Brudenell - as in, I never got to the Brudenell, spent the day on sofa!