Category Archives: Travel

Andalusia – 3. Costa Del Sol

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At times we stay in the villa of a friend on the outskirts of Marbella. It is just a short drive from Malaga airport, all going well. The use of satnav is recommended on Spanish roads, otherwise you, like us, will get lost. It looked the height of simplicity to get from airport to front porch, but born as I was to have adventure, it took me over two hours. The A7 highway was my intended route, not to be confused with the AP 7 which runs beside it, the two often intertwining. Confuse is exactly what I did, but first I took the random decision on our first visit to make a quick flythrough of the famous, or infamous, resorts on the southern extremes of Malaga.

The Costa del Sol is well named and stretches from Nerja, just east of Malaga, to La Linea near Gibraltar. A prosperous commercial and industrial area in the 19th century, it declined in the early twentieth and after World War 2 turned to attracting visitors as a way to halt the economic decline. Where the coast was once a string of fishing villages, it is now mostly urbanised and has grown to be Spain’s most frequented tourist location with around seventeen million overnight stay.

Torremolinos golf course marked the beginning of the boom way back in 1928, The development of Malaga as resort town followed. The Spanish Civil War intervened, with World War two kicking off just as it ended, but by the fifties the fame of the region spread for its climate and facilities. Marbella, a village of 900 people, saw the establishment of the El Rodeo resort and Marbella Club hotel, and attracted film stars and the rich and famous. Mass tourism exploded in the sixties and seventies leading to overdevelopment, often submerginfg the culture which was a major part of the attraction in the first place.

Torremolinos, Benalmadena and Fuengerola are packed together. once a poor fishing village, is now a town of seventy thousand people just 8miles from Malaga. It has the largest concentration of golf courses in Spain. Fore! I am sure there are more. The climate makes this one of the most enjoyable places to play, if Golf could be considered a pleasure, or a good walk spoiled.

The resorts were developed without much concern for aesthetic or social planning and became a notorious highrise jungle. While the serious tourist demurred, many more voted with their boarding pass. A cocktail of sun, sea and sex with two weeks determined indolence offered an antidote to the humdrum of work slaves from the temperate zone.

The urban landscape ultimately reflects its own purpose; a modern, commercial open holiday camp. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing. M and I were more of the island hopping hippy type, back in the day; though our once ad hoc holiday season is a bit more planned now. Spain, of course, accommodates much more than the cartoon holidaymaker. We’ve oft visited over the years, mostly Barcelona, also Madrid and Malaga, and the kaleidoscope of culture and moods that is Andalusia.

Driving through the tourist hub from Torremolinos to Fuengerola is a sample of the sun soaked brochures we’ve perused. We gained a startling glimpse of the giant black Bull on its mound, which adorns my travel book of Spain. This is the famous advertisement for Osborne Brandy. The concept was conceived by Manolo Prieto in an advertising campaign in the 1950s for Osborne. The giant metal bull silhouette bore the Osborne brand and appeared at roadsides throughout the country. Some are 40 feet high and there are almost a hundred all over Spain, though not in Catalonia.

Roadside advertising was progressively curtailed over the next few decades and eventually banned altogether, but campaigners fought to keep their bull. In Andalusia, the authorities ruled that they were part of the cultural and artistic heritage of the nation in 1997 and remained, minus the branding, though Osborne still pays for their upkeep. Some controversy remains, especially amongst opponents of bullfighting; hence the exception of Catalonia.

Osborne, you might know, goes hand in hand with Harrison, so it was a sight dear to our eyes to see the bull standing proud. Thomas Osborne, mind, had no direct connection with our kin. They came to Wicklow in the seventeenth century I think, and were stonemasons. Thomas was an Englishman who arrived in Cadiz in 1772 and exported sherry to begin with The brandy came some time later.

We figured that after Fuengirola we would be nearing our destination. Unfortunately, coming off the seafont there was a fork in the road and the sign offered Marbella in either direction. Eenie, meenie, minie, mo. Wrong choice, I’m afraid. We found ourseves headed back towards Malaga, then taking an exit, we wound up on the AP 7, which is a toll road, and ended up in Canada. Canada, in this case is a shopping centre in Haute Marbella. The town centre was downhill from there but by this stage our satnav was even more confused than us and would stop at nothing to get us back to Canada again. Eventually we found the coastal branch of the A7 after a chaotic tour of Marbella centre, including rapidly reversing before an oncoming tram. Our destination, Elviria, was just five miles out of town.

Fuengirola is in fact the last rail stop along this stretch of coast. The commuter line to Malaga has three trains an hour, the journey taking forty five minutes. It stops at the airport which takes thirty minutes. From Malaga, there’s a railway connection to Algeciras (past Gibraltar) via Ronda, and connections also to Seville and on to Cadiz.

The coastal highway, meanwhile, leaves Malaga city environs behind and rounds the corner to follow the coastline to Marbella. La Cala de Mijas is the first stop. This is a small settlement of five thousand people which maintains much of the feeling of the whitewashed Andalusian fishing village. There were four towers defending it from Berber invaders, one of which forms the centrepiece of its attractive seafront. Dating from the sixteenth century it is one of the oldest on the coast and has a museum within. There are sensitive modern developments along the coast, lowrise and white, a tiny, winding old town, a wide commercial plaza just off the highway, a long promenade and a twice weekly market.

A boardwalk extends along the beach heading west stretching almost the 6 kilometres to Cabopino. This is a small resort around a pleasant harbour where we stopped for lunch on a coastal walk. There’s a large private resort hotel, while bars, souvenir stalls and eateries colonise the beach. Farther on the nudist beach is marked by a large stone erection, but we pretended not to notice. Torre Ladrones, the thieves tower, is a much visited landmark. At fifteen metres tall it is the highest tower along this stretch of coast. It was built during Moorish rule up to the late fifteenth century. Artola Beach is backed by dunes which have been designated an environmental reserve, making it a rare stretch of beach not developed as accommodation.

It is a farther six kilometres to our own base in Elviria. There are plenty of good beach bars and eateries along here, and a lovely view of the curving coast down to Marbella; backed by high mountains, Gibraltar shimmering off the coast in the far distance.

So, it’s time to step off the humdrum, relax and enjoy our cocktail by the pool. One theme song suggests itself. Massiel singing El Amor. Though it’s hardly relaxing, what with the veins on her forehead snapping like high tension wires in a gale as she reaches, um, crescendo. It chimes with the mood, though.

El amor es un rayo de luz indirecta

Una gota de paz, una fe que despierta

Un zumbido en el aire, un punto en la niebla

Un perfil, una sombra, una pausa, una espera

El amor es un suave, rumor que se acerca

Un timbre a lo lejos, una brisa ligera

Una voz en la calma, un aroma de menta

Un después, un quizá, una vez, una meta

Massiel, Maris de los Angeles Santamaria Espinosa, is a well known Spanish singer. She covers a broad range in her repertoire, from popular to Brecht/Weil, and protest songs which annoyed Franco and Pinochet. She sang the winning song for Spain, La La La in Eurovision 1968, after the original singer Joan Serrat withdrew when not allowed to sing in Catalan. Congratulations!

Andalusia – 2. Granada and Alhambra

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When I took up the guitar in my early teens, it was to flamenco that I turned. I was thinking a lot about the paintings of Salvador Dali in those days and I also became immersed in Spanish history. The Alhambra was a particular fascination, a red castle ringed by snow capped peaks, above the city of Granada. So, some fifty years later, I at last made my pilgrimage. An early Easter was approaching and a blanket of snow lay over Dublin. The plane was a while on the tarmac as workers chipped ice off the wings. At least we were off to sunny Spain.

There was a bleak sun on Malaga when I landed, but it was cold and the sidewalk bars huddled behind plastic awnings with heaters ablaze. It’s a two hour bus ride up to Granada, but I had an overnight and aimed to get a taste of Malaga in a day. Relaxing over a wine, I noticed that crowds of people were heading towards the city centre and figured there was something on. It being Holy Week, a procession by one of the Brotherhoods passes each day. I quickly succumbed to its hypnotic magnetism. Solemn music accompanies towering floats, or tronos, one of the Christ and the other, typically more exuberant, is of the Virgin.

Each weighs several tons and are carried, very slowly, by members of the Brotherhood from their parish church through the city centre, past the Cathedral and on to the Plaza before Teatro Cervantes. Which is where to relax as the solemn spell wanes.

The Teatro Cervantes was built in 1870 and named for Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes is well commemorated throughout Andalusia. His writing pervades the entire Spanish consciousness. As is Shakespeare to English, he is central to Spanish. Don Quixote is regarded as the first novel in the modern sense, and has become, after the Bible, the most translated book in the world. We all know its eponymous hero, hopeless and heroic, forever tilting agaist the hostility of life. Cervantes came to embody his own maxim, that the pen is the language of the soul

My own pilgrimage took me to Malaga Bus Station to the west of the city early the next morning. Granada, just over ninety miles distant, is a two hour bus journey through coastal mountains, the snow capped Sierra Nevada ultimately embracing the city as we reach our destination. Granada’s Bus Station is a good bit out of town and I took a taxi to the centre and my hotel.

Granada, a place of dreams, where the Lord put the seed of music in my soul. (Andres Segovia)

The fabulous castle overlooking it all, the Alhambra, was the last fortress the Moors. Alhambra signifies the Red Castle, from the blood toned colour of its stone. The Moors built their first fortress in the ninth century but the existing complex dates to 1333 when Yusuf I was Sultan of Granada. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, defeated the Emirate of Granada. 1492 was also the year when Italian explorer Christopher Columbus came here to receive the support of the Monarchs in his ambition to sail to the New World. This is when the Western World was born. An early history of Columbus was written by Washington Irving, American author and ambassador to Spain. He, in tur, rediscovered the Alhambra for the modern world. His Tales of the Alhambra was published in 1842. In 2009, on the 150th anniversary of his death, a bronze statue was erected on the wooded approach to the citadel.

I entered through Puerta de la Justicia under its Moorish horseshoe arch. From the ramparts there’s a great view over Granada framed by the Sierra Nevada. When the Moor last looked out from here, the Alhambra was entirely a construct of the Islamic culture of northern Africa. Within a couple of decades a more European style spread. The Palace of Carlos V was built by order of the Emperor in 1527 in the Renaissance style. The entrance patio is a startling homage to Classicism, with its two story colonnade forming an entrancing circle. 

The Nazaries is the showpiece of the Alhambra, a magnificent palace for the Kings. A separate ticket is required for visitors, and well worth it. Guide books caution to come prepared for the heat, but my visit coincided wih a severe cold snap. Four degrees and falling I was frozen blue in the long entrance queue. The Nazaries unfolds on entering, a stone flower opening into more spaces than anticipated from the outside. There are three palaces within the complex. First, the public area dealing with justice and administration. Then the Camares Palace which was the royal residence. Finally, the Palace of the Lions, where the harem was located. A magnificent centrepiece is the Court of the Lions with its sculptured lions forming a circle within delicately rendered cloisters. 

For a short break, I took a table in the tiny tearoom of the American Hotel. A Tuna Sandwich and two hot Americanos got me back to room temperature. A friend had recommended a visit to the terrace at the Parador Hotel but it was not a patio day and the interior had that lowrise furniture peculiar to hotels and inimicable to relaxation.

The Alcazaba is the fortress at the business end of the Alhambra, its towers giving majestic views over Granada. It is the oldest part of the complex, dating to the thirteenth century. From there, I made my way down towards the entrance through beautiful gardens. The first blooms were appearing but had not quite come to life. Across a ravine there’s a stiff climb to the Generalife, the Gardens of the Architect. These beautiful gardens surmounted by an elegant villa provided a retreat for the Royal Household from the travails of the Alhambra and give glorious views of the Alhambra.

On exit, I put into the first available bar. Below the walls there was shelter  and sufficient warmth from the sun to allow me enjoy a beer and tapas al fresco. Heading downhill past the northern walls alongside a rapid stream, I emerged onto the banks of the Darro river following it back towards Plaza Nueva in the city centre.

Overlooking the Darro is the Albaicin, dating back to the 13th century and rich in Moorish heritage. The streets meander past high walled villas with white washed walls, towering palms and pines. Quiet and weird; at times I felt I had strayed into a Dali painting. Stranger still, it darkened off to the west and a sudden storm came upon us. Snow fell in curtains across the backdrop of the Alhambra.

Plaza Nueva merges into the Plaza de Santa Ana and on into the modern city centre. I had planned on a flamenco evening in Sacromonte, but the weather closed off that particular avenue of pleasure. I did spend much of my second day in Sacromonte, a bleached enclave clinging to the steep hill at the edge of Grenada, This was originally home to the gypsy, or Gitanos population, and is rich in the heritage of guitar and Flamenco. There are tiny taverns and homespun museums, and a feeling of being remote from the big city. 

At night I’d spend some time in Hannigan’s Irish Bar, not far from the Cathedral of the Incarnation. Hannigan’s does not do the complementary tapas that are a feature of local establishments. It’s a wonderful custom, but there is a time to stop eating and sit in splendid isolation over a drink and contemplate the sound and stories that permeate the city. Hannigan’s seemed to share my fondness for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose music, to me, carries some echo of the spirit of the Andalusian guitar. 

Fly away on my zephyr

I feel it more than ever

And in this perfect weather

We’ll find a place together

from the 2002 album By the Way, a favourite of mine, and yes, I remember in Granada smiling at the mention of perfect weather; but in a strange way it was. In sunshine or snow, the magic of the Alhambra endures. The winding way to the citadel begins near the Fontana del Toro on the Plaza de Santa Ana. It is said that a drink from its waters has magical qualities. Drink once and you will return forever. I hope to, some day. Meanwhile, Christmas is around the corner and this is likely to be my last post for the year. Happy Christmas to yous all! 

Oh the weather outside is frightful

But the fire is so delightful

And since we’ve no place to go

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Andalusia – Introduction and Malaga

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Andalusia is the southernmost region of Spain, with its capital at Seville. It is the hottest place in Europe with summer temperatures in the forties and low rainfall. The more moderate climate along the coast, still hot and sunny, has been a magnet for tourists for decades. Coming, like many, from the cool, damp, grey green island I call home, it is always a shock to find a place where warm sunshine and blue skies are the norm. Costa del Sol is well named, stretching for about a hundred miles from Nerja in the east, via Malaga and Marbella to La Linea near Gibraltar in the west. Home to one and a half million people, millions more visit for its resorts, sunshine beach holidays made-to-measure, cheap beer and nightlife, There is much more than that, of course. Spain reveals itself to those willing to look.

Andalusia seems an ideal region for a self-drive tour, or there’s a comprehensive public transport network with bus and train linking the main cities. Malaga, Seville, Cordoba, Granada and Cadiz are rich repositories of Classical, Moorish and Renaissance heritage. It is the home of Flamenco, originally the music of the Gypsies, the theme for dancing at the crossroads of civilisation. Bullfighting is deeply embedded in the culture also, much of its tradition developed in this region, and its popularity endures here more than elsewhere.

There are more than eight million inhabitants, making it Spain’s most populous region. Andalusia is derived from the Arabic, Al Andalus. This applied to the Moorish territories of Iberia between 700 and 1492. The name may hark back to the Vandals who invaded Iberia and North Africa in the 5th century. The Vandals originated in Poland and are today remembered for their sacking of Rome and the origin of the word vandalism as the arbitrary defacement of culture and art. They faded from view in the sixth century with the expansion of the Byzantine empire under Justinian and assimilation amongst the peoples of Iberia and North Africa

Africa looms large, culturally, historically and geographically. It is closest to Andalusia where the narrow entrance to the Mediterranean forms the Strait of Gibraltar. At its narrowest point the gap separating the continents is a mere thirteen kilometres wide between Point Marroqui in Spain near Tarifa and Point Cires in Morocco. A nexus for shipping, for exploration, trade, migration and invasion, the gap is guarded by the Pillars of Hercules, a name stretching back to the myths of antiquit. Physically, these are the Rock of Gibraltar, a British territory, and across the Strait either Monte Hacho or Jebel Musa (Mount Moses). Both of these lie near the city of Ceuta. a small Spanish territory in Morocco. Regular ferries sail there from Algecerias, just across the bay from Gibraltar; a huge port and the southernmost city of continental Europe.

For most, Malaga airport is the usual gateway to the region. My first visit was aboard a cruise ship bound for the Atlantic, first to Morocco and on to the Canaries and Madeira. Our first stop was Malaga; the sort of thing one says when about to step off the edge of the world before passing through the Pillars of Hercules sixty miles to the east. It has been an important port for two millennia or more. Phoenician traders from Africa were the first to set up shop here and Malaga remained within the sphere of Carthage until the Romans established dominion in the third century BC. The Muslim Caliphate established its fortress here after the fall of the Roman empire. The Emirate of Granada arrogated power over the region in the thirteenth century. Most stubborn of the Moors, they resisted the Christian Reconquest until 1487.

Overlooking the port, the hill of Gibralfar rises to the north.. An ancient ruined casle crowns the summit. Lower down, the citadel of Alcazaba, was built in the eleventh century within the walls of the Moorish city. Alcazaba is superbly maintained and we rise through a maze of alleyways a thousand years old, gardens and fountains emerging regularly. Gurgling water, sheltering trees and the scent of flowers mellow the near African harshness of the climate in high summer. It’s a good climb to the top, with spectacular views from the walls over the city and coast. 

View from the Alcazaba

Below, the old Roman amphitheatre, dating from the first century BC, nestles on the landward side. Radiating out from this, the medieval town still preserves its chaotic street pattern. Perfect for the stroller who doesn’t mind getting lost, you certainly won’t go hungry or thirsty with a full range of daytime and eaving eateries and watering holes. We stroll down Calle Marques de Larios, a pedestrianised street with gleaming surface, lined with elegant boutiques and shoe shops. From the seafront it cuts through the heart of the medieval area. Just off this street, Calle Strachan leads to the Cathedral de la Incarnacion. Construction began in the sixteenth century on the site of the city Mosque. A grand though haphazard project, it exhibits a variety of styles, going through Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. The completed tower soars to three hundred feet, but the project ran out of funds in the nineteenth century. The second entrance tower was left incomplete, gaining the church the nickname, La Manquita, the one-armed lady.

Near the Cathedral is the old Jewish Quarter. In the Calle San Agustin you’ll find the Buenavista Palace, a sixteenth century building which is now home to the Picasso Museum. It’s located only two hundred metres from the Plaza de la  Merked where Picasso was born in 1881 and holds over two hundred works donated by members of Picasso’s family.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a radical innovator in the determinedly Avante Garde Fine Art of the twentieth century. As a young painter, his Blue Period and Rose period showed his realist skills, where colour and mood combine. He made a radical departure to develop the fragmented technique of cubism, with French painter Georges Braque and fellow Spaniard Juan Gris. Impossibly prolific, sometimes to the point of self caricature, true genius and the profound are evident in probably his best known work Guernica. This emerged from the the bombing of the Basque town by German and Italian airforce  during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso did not want the work shown in Spain during Franco’s dictatorship, and it was kept for over four decades at the MoMA in New York. A century after Picasso’s birth, Spain was restored to a democracy, and the painting returned, first to the Prado and since 1991 at the Reina Sofia, also in Madrid. Although first displayed behind bullet proof glass, it has since had no extra protection than any other painting. I took this photo of my son, Davin, in front of the unprotected painting in 2010.

A labyrinth of streets, dotted with galleries and bars leads down to the River. The Guadalmedina, literally the Town River, is typical of Spain’s urban rivers, forming a disappointing concrete esplanade. At Siesta time crowds gather in the Atarazanes, the nineteenth century Central Market, queuing at stalls selling beer and tapas. We return through modern thoroughfares to the seafront. A lovely linear park, lined with towering palm trees, makes something of an oasis in the afternoon sun. Back at the Marina, the restaurants and bars are thronged. We squeezed into one, which is a self service. A welcome draft beer is just what the body needed. The afternoon is simmering, the crowds ebbing. We watch the sea flowing, as we soon must, towards the Pillars of Hercules, the wild Atlantic waiting beyond. 

I would return, of course, and explore other parts and aspects of the city. Malaga, as a good city should, rewards many visits. And there’s so much more in the fascinating region that is Andalusia. That is something of an ongoing project for me. Over the next few weeks I will write about visits to Granada, Marbella, Ronda, and other sketches of Spain, experienced and anticipated.

Rear Window

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Last October we took a week away in Elviria, near Marbella in Spain. I haven’t posted since returning, but there is work in the pipeline. I am penning a series on Andalusia, the region in Spain that includes a few places I have been, Malaga, Grenada, Marbella and Ronda, and a few places I haven’t; Seville and Cadiz, yet. Meanwhile,  I am wintering at home, as usual. This particular work is set close to home. The original photo was taken by a backseat passenger and focusses on the receding view of Bray as we head north on the N11 towards the M50. Being a rearview, we can’t see where we’re going but have an ever-shrinking view of where we’ve been. A bit  like life, I supose. 

To which end I spend my days

within the poetry of motorways

In this acrylic it’s late Autumn and near the end of a rainy evening. You  may just about make out a flyover in the distance and beyond that the Small Sugarloaf, or Giltspur, is consumed in the glare of the setting sun. The banner across the top of the rear window advertises Mooney’s car dealership on the Long Mile Road in Walkinstown. Shades of my youth lie there. My old school Drimnagh Castle was on the Long Mile and a whole vortex of memories is carried on the winds thereabouts.

Where ghost musicians haunt roads and lanes 

with harps that once and old refrains,

I recall that I used to go on the hop some afternoons and head out along the Long Mile towards the Naas Road. One companion then was Gerry Ryan. There was one occasion where we got as far as the Red Cow Inn (a small bar then, in the early seventies) slaked our thirst with a pint and headed back home. Gerry was a nippy winger and went on to play soccer for Bohemians over in Phibsboro. He would graduate to the top division of English soccer with Brighton and Hove Albion and of course was capped as an Irish international. He stayed in Brighton after retirement and ran a pub, the Witch Inn in Sussex. Gerry suffered poor health in recent years and returned home to D12. He died in October at the age of 68.

There are other shades there also, and I’ve written of them in other ways. A poem of my old hometown might fit within some blues refrain for our theme song. I’ve included a few quotes here. It’s called the Girl from Fox and Geese.

I drive alone at the brink of heaven 

where the Long Mile Road meets the N7,

sipping absinthe from a billy can, 

the hi fi tuned to Steely Dan.

So, this is how the planet dies 

beneath the swollen sulphur skies,

as mercury blooms on bonewhite trees 

at five to six in Fox and Geese.

Cork and Limerick by Rail – Limerick

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From Cork Kent, the train to Limerick takes about an hour and twenty minutes. You change at Limerick Junction with a couple of minutes changeover to a feeder train. Limerick Colbert is on the south eastern rim of the city. It’s about a ten minute walk into the city centre along Parnell Street, or a block over via the more salubrious Catherine Street, as I did. 

Limerick’s population is over ninety thousand, making it the third largest city in the country. The original settlement was on King’s Island, north of the present city centre. The Vikings settled here in the ninth century, marking the western extent of their Irish invasion. The Vikings were subjugated by the leading local Gaelic clan, the Dalcassians of County Clare, in 943. The Dalcassians would subsequently come under the leadership of Brian Boru, whose campaigns in the late tenth and early eleventh century signalled the waning of Danish power in Ireland. The Limerick Vikings were enlisted by Brian in his struggle against Leinster Gaels and Dublin Danes. After the Battle of Clontarf Danish power withered outside of Dublin before being completely obliterated by the Normans.

The Normans were keen to establish a power base here. King John’s Castle is one of the many established by that King in Ireland. Dublin was another, Trim and Carlingford also. Begun in 1200, it was completed a dozen years later and is today one of the best preserved Norman castles you’ll see. It is Limerick’s most renowned landmark. The modern reception area makes for an odd introduction to the traditional Norman style castle of a large courtyard surrounded by curtain walls. The massive gate house and three corner towers remain. The eastern wall is missing, occupied by the modernist visitor centre. This offers interactive exhibitions, while the courtyard is haunted by garrolous actors. Visitors can try their hand at ancient pursuits such as archery and fencing, but no, there’s no chance of actually killing anything. Weirdly, there was once a small modern housing estate within the walls until the end of the last century. What a strange address to have. Despite eight hundred years of often violent history, including the violence of unsympathetic urban planning, the castle is in a high state of repair.

Katy Daly’s is situated across from the Castle entrance, on the Parade, an ancient historic street. A tavern in the old style, it’s ideal for a refreshing pint, or a meal, after the exertions of a castle visit. With sunshine spread over its front of house terrace, I had a pleasant time, accosted in the most friendly fashion by a couple of locals. Daly’s lays claim to being the oldest pub in Limerick. A pub, the Red Lion is recorded here in 1600, while the license can be traced back to the Halpin family in 1789. It takes its name from Prohibition era moonshiner, Katie Daly, born in California of Tipperary immigrants in 1872. Her father Bill was killed in a shootout with Wyatt Earp and his recipe for Poitin would endure thanks to his enterprising daughter. By the Prohibition Era, Katie operated out of Chicago were she fell foul of Al Capone, but escaped to the relative safety of San Francisco. However her enterprise came to the attention of the FBI and ended with her incarceration in Alcatraz, the island prison in the Bay. The only female prisoner there, she died before her fifteen year stretch was out.

King’s Island is Limerick’s fortified core. It is formed by the branching of the River Shannon. The main river delineates its western shore. The eastern branch is referred to as the Abbey River; the two meeting again farther south near the city centre. The walled city of Limerick grew in the shadow of the castle. After the Norman invasion this was referred to as Englishtown. Irishtown grew across the Abbey River in what’s now called the Old Quarter. The medieval city axis was along Nicholas Street, and the area drew comparison with medieval European cities such as Rouen and was greatly renowned for its beauty and prosperity. 

Limerick suffered badly in the wars of the 17th century. There were at least four Sieges of Limerick. In the Cromwellian invasion the city was eventually starved into surrender. Fifty years later In 1690 there were further sieges as Jacobites, retreating after the Battle of the Boyne, held out against the Williamites. The Jacobites inflicted a heavy defeat on William’s forces, but were forced to surrender the following year. Patrick Sarsfield, commander of Limerick’s defenders, signed the Treaty of Limerick in 1691. He lead his forces – nineteen thousand troops and about a thousand women and children, into exile in what has become known as the Flight of the Wild Geese. The Treaty Stone stands on the western side of Thomond Bridge, the ancient bridge connecting the Kings Island to the west bank and on to Thomond Park, Munster’s Rugby stadium.

St Mary’s Cathedral, just south of the castle, is the oldest building in Limerick. Dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, it was founded in 1168 by Donal Mor O’Brien, the last King of Munster, and built on the Viking Thingmote, or Parliament. Donal died in 1194 and his tomb lies within the cathedral. The Romanesque building has been much added to over the years with Gothic and Victorian embellishments but retains its stern and ancient air. Its distinctive square tower with turretted corners is from the fourteenth century and soars above the western entrance.

Vestiges of the Walls of Limerick, appear along busy Island Street, though Nicholas Street is more evocative of the ancient city. Left untouched by the modern development in the eighteenth century, the old city was gradually abandoned, and few buildings remain. Near the confluence of the Abbey and Shannon, just below the Cathedral gates, is the end of English Town. George’s Quay hugs the river bank, and here you’ll find the Locke Bar at the Bridge. The original pub site dates back three hundred years. There’s traditional music sessions and dancing every night. The lounge area is large, flooded with the late afternoon light. Outside, there’s a wide beer garden on the tree lined river banks. The garden often features summer barbecues, and good food fare is available throughout, including seafood, burgers and Irish Stew.

Across the river Irish Town, or the Old Quarter, occupies the south bank to your left. On the right is a pleasant riverside parkland, with the Hunt Museum prominent on the streetfront. The Hunt Museum was originally the Custom House, designed by Italian Davis Ducart. It’s a limestone Palladian building from 1765, three stories tall. The museum features the collection of John and Gertrude Hunt, housed in the current building since 1997. The Hunts collected collected art from neolithic Ireland to ancient Egypt, medieval Christian artefacts from Ireland and Europe. There’s also dresses by Sybil Connolly and work by Picasso, Renoir and Jack B Yeats. The Horse Outside art installation are fibreglass sculptures from 2010, painted by children and inspired by the Rubberbandits hit. They are the local comedy hip hop duo of Mr Chrome and Blindboy Boatclub.

A century after the Treaty, Limerick moved south. Landowner, Edmund Sexton Pery commissioned Irish engineer Christopher Colles to design a new town in 1769. Newtown Pery is an outstanding example of Georgian city planning. Being built on one owners lands allowed for a regular grid system making for an architecturally unified, elegant streetscapes which is very modern, and most unusual in Ireland.

Building came to an abrupt end after the Famine. The expanding city finally ebbed to the shores of Pery Square to the south. Originally intended as a Grand square in the mode of Dublin’s Merrion Square, you can judge the intent along the northern side. The People’s Park is a wonderful green oasis within its embrace. Limerick Art Gallery is at the northern corner quite near the train station. Wonderful landscapes of the nineteenth century comprise the bulk of the collection, with some contemporary work and visiting exhibits. Nearby, you will also find the urban oasis of Baker Place with St Saviour’s Dominican Church church and the picturesque Tait’s Clock Tower.

Back to the commercial city centre, William Street aligns with the major Shannon crossing. In 1835 a new bridge called Wellesley Bridge spanned the river. The five arched bridge incorporated an artificial island, home to a club house for the Rowing Club. It was renamed for Patrick Sarsfield in 1882. At right angles is O’Connell Street, originally George’s Street, which is the principal street of the modern city. Along William Street you’ll find a traditional table service fish and chipper, Enzo’s. Enzo Rocca arrived from Italy fifty years ago and set up shop in Newcastle West with his brother Franco in the Golden Grill chipper. The city restaurant he established in 1984 was a seafood restaurant to begin with. Enzo’s has become a much loved institution in Limerick, a time capsule for a halcyon age, with a battered cod and chips to adore. Sadly Enzo passed away on the first of September at the age of seventy seven

The grid of Newtown Pery merges into the narrow winding streets of the Old Quarter, where I am staying at the eponymous hotel. It’s an interesting warren of streets, merging with cafe society where the city centre shoppers spill over, spent from a hard day at the retail coalface. Nancy Blake’s on Denmark Street is an intimate old style pub with a beer terrace out the back. There’s a late bar and live music five nights a week. I spend some time here on my last night, in the balm of neon and cobblestones, with appropriately classic rock tracks seeping out of the sound system. 

It’s a pity I haven’t given myself more time. A day is seldom enough for a city, and certainly not here. Thanks to Niamh Mulville for her itinerary which informed my visit. There are some visits that I did not make. A mecca for rock tourists, Dolan’s Pub in the docklands area is where the Cranberries started on their path to world domination. Their second album No Need to Argue (1994) was a huge iternational hit. The lead single off that , Zombie became a signature number. Writer Dolores O’Riordan was born in Ballybricken, about ten miles south of Limerick in 1971, and died in 2018. I have quoted the song before and recently it has been given a rousing rendition by the supporters of the Irish Rugby team at the World Cup. The Munster contingent are responsible for this and the reasons are obvious. Thomond Park, out past the Treaty Stone is their own particular Mecca and so local heroes the Cranberries might be expected to provide the occasional theme song. All provinces have joined in and of course all of us back home will be wishing the furious wind will fill their sails and bring victory to the men in green. Truly, they are fighting. 

Cork and Limerick by Rail

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1. Cork

Dublin to Cork is two and a half hours by rail. There’s a train every hour on the hour leaving from Dublin Heuston. The train barrels through the south midlands to Limerick Junction before veering due south through Cork, Ireland’s largest county and on to the Republic’s second city, Cork. The train arrives at Cork Kent station to the north east of the city on the Glanmire Road. It’s a short walk from there to my accommodation at Isaacs Hotel on McCurtain Street.

McCurtain Street is being ripped up at the moment but there’s plenty of restaurants, cafes and bars on this busy thoroughfare. Following the main road takes you down to the River Lee, and the city centre lies on the low lying island formed by the division of the river. The division in the River Lee happens well west of the city, past the University campus. The northern branch is the major; wide and relatively straight. The southern branch is narrower and windier, giving a quirky, intimate and scenic aspect to the city. 

Union Quay takes you past the City Hall and the College of Music. On the opposite bank there’s the Cork studios of national broadcaster, RTE. A few doors up the distinctive ornate Neo Gothic spire of the Holy Trinity Church soars above Father Mathew Quay. Begun in the 1830s, it was not completed until the 1890s, construction having been delayed by the Famine. The design was chosen by competition, the winner being English architect John Pain, who also designed Blackrock Castle and the Courthouse on Washington Street. The interior includes three windows by Harry Clarke, and the window behind the High Altar is dedicated to Daniel O’Connell, 

The spire and facade were the last element completed, and were somewhat scaled down from Pain’s original plans. Still very impressive though, facade and spire combining in a unified statement, the entire structure tapering to its peak while the use of flying buttresses and cast iron supports give the building the lightness of lace, as an observer put it: more air than stone. The church belongs to the Capuchins, an order of Fransiscan friars, and is also dedicated to the memory of Father Matthew who commissioned the church, and otherwise devoted himself to helping the poor, becoming also a notorious campaigner against the demon drink. 

South Parish occupies the steep river banks, and like Shandon on the north bank, was an early suburb of the ancient walled city. The streets hereabouts go back a long way, with many colourful names. Whether Father Matthew had anything to do with Sober Lane, I can’t say, but it boasts one of Cork’s best beer gardens and an ironically named bar on Sullivan’s Quay. Uphill, we passSt Finbarr’s South, which dates from 1766 and is the oldest Catholic Church in the city. Sculptor John Hogan contributed the sculpture of the Dead Christ on the High Altar in 1832, carved from the same white marble from the Carrara Quarry used by Michelangelo. Farther up, the Red Abbey is one of Cork’s oldest structures,  an early fourteenth century Augustinian abbey. The friars persisted, even after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1541, for another century until the Catholic Rebellion of 1641. Only the church tower remains, 

Nano Nagle Place is situated further up on Douglas Street. Born in 1718 Honora Nagle was from a well to do Catholic family in Penal days. The Catholic population then was poor and uneducated, something which Nagle determined to address. Her Uncle Joseph mantained a Protestant front to safeguard the family’s fortune. This allowed for Honora’s education in in Paris. While there she noticed the contrast between her life of privelege and the misery endured by the city’s poor. This she compared to the plight of her own Catholic community back home. She returned to Ireland and established seven schools, for boys and girls, the first in the ghetto where she grew up on Cove Street. She also established a convent for the Ursuline Sisters, a French order of nuns. Being enclosed kept them remote from the community, so Nagle went on to found her own, outgoing order. The convent she founded in 1771 forms the nucleus for Nano Nagle Place, with a museum, bookshop, gardens and her tomb. The award winning museum gives a lively, animated tour through Nagle’s life and work and also illustrates the parallel development of Cork city in the eighteenth century.

Fionnbarra’s Bar farther down Douglas Street, is a good place to slake your thirst with an eccentric beer garden out back. Brightly painted statuary serves to further tilt the axis of reality off the vertical, although a few pints of the brew would contribute to such effects also. 

I take the Nano Nagle footbridge across the river on to Grand Parade. Triskel Arts Centre is within the old walled city of Cork. A fragment of these walls remain in the Bishop Lucy Park next door, on the west side of Grand Parade. There’s a short but very useful account of ancient Cork and its early viking origins. Christchurch is a restored eighteenth century church once the main Church of Ireland place of worship in the city. It dates back to the eleventh century when a Hiberno Norse church was built on this site, this becoming a focal point for the developing city. You can view the ancient crypt beneath the current structure. Today the building is an intrinsic part of the Triskel and features regular music, arthouse cinema and literary events. There are regular exhibitions. My visit coincided with Then I Laid the Floor, featuring the work of three artists. The exhibition references a house built by relatives of Sao Paolo based Irish artist James Concagh, providing an interesting if vague visual narrative. Contributory work is provided by Brian Maguire whose art from all corners of the globe is consistently samey and shouldn’t detain you too long.

Farther along we reach the Cornmarket and the North branch of the river appears. The Shandon Footbridge takes us across the river and the climb up Widderling’s Lane leads to the heart of Shandon. This working class area has its own unique inner city feel. I had my eyes set on a Middle Eastern restaurant in the shadow of the bell tower of St Anne’s and sitting outside on a warm evening in the labyrinth of backstreets certainly had a Mediterranean feel to it. The restaurant even supplied a hookah pipe to an adjoining table to enhance the ambience. Unfortunately, my order resembled dessicated goat dipped in vinegar and I didn’t stay long. I resolved on a pint to wash away the lingering taste and hurried back to Son of a Bun, a good American Hamburger restaurant on McCurtain Street with which I’m familiar.

On the way I noticed one of Cork’s best loved bars. Sin É, Irish for that’s it. This is a busy spot with regular traditional and ballad music. The packed interior is a gem, and upstairs there’s a more reflective spot with candlelit tables where I grab a window seat. And thereby hangs a tale. The candles are not yet lit, and though on my ownio, I decide to light up for a little atmosphere. This attracted a tourist, German I think, who asked for a light for his own unlit candle. I obliged. Thus the light was spread troughout the world. I spent a happy half hour writing in my notebook and a few more moments reflection before heading off down the city centre. I got as far as the Oliver Plunkett, on the eponymous street, where outdoor seating allows for relaxed people watching. Looking for the notebook again, I find that it’s gone. It can only be back in Sin E, so I must return. The place is truly hopping, and I am none too optimistic approaching the upstairs table now occupied by a young woman. She has stowed my notebook on an adjacent shelf. It is a small thing of no great value, but I am delighted to be reunited with it again. Downstairs, I decide to celebrate with a pint. In an alcove, I take out a fistful of change and begin to count out the money required. Suddenly, the German tourist from before is at my shoulder. I will buy you a pint, he says, for earlier you gave me fire. Don’t you just love it. I had to laugh. I wasn’t sort of money, but had typically accumulated a lot of shrapnel and wanted to lighten the load. What goes around comes around. I see out the evening with pints and pleasant company. That’s Cork for ye; Sin É.

Cloudburst on Florence Road

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This has been a wet summer, even by Irish standards. It is a constant perspective here to view life through rain streaked glass; huddled in a cafe shopfront, looking out the kitchen window, scenery rushing through the windscreen of a car. I’ve painted Connemara driving through the rain and more recently, a sodden rush hour from the upstairs front seat of a bus on Amiens Street. The latter I took from a friend’s photo (thanks Paula Nolan!) but this one is all me own work. Taken through the windscreen of our car parked on Florence Road, Bray, looking up towards Main Street and the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer. We are dropping in to Florence Furniture and Antiques in the left foreground. A good antiques shop is a treasure chest of the past, and more. An alternative universe where it is possible to imagine each artefact a living thing, a receptacle for history and craft, and love, and much, much more; hopeful, awaiting its future in another setting. The stories they could tell. The building was previously an art shop, and a printworks before that.

Across the street is Hayes Butchers Shop, a long established family business and friendly with it. Stories and gossip are exchanged here in the old fashioned way. It’s where I get all the beef; if you catch my drift. The Church was established in 1843, funded by subscription including generous donations from Bray’s sizeable Protestant community. It was remodelled in the 1890s by WH Byrne who, around the same time, was supervising the reconstruction of Dublin City Markets on Sth Great George’s Street to the magnificent building we see today. The Holy Redeemer, however, looks very different now to the nineteenth century structure. The mid sixties saw the facade altered to a modernist gabled front with a new plain, soaring bell tower. Surprisingly, you will find the nineteenth century interior remains. The old within the new.

Belfast – 3: Troubles

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Most cities offer an open-top, hop-on hop-off bus tour. Mostly I can take or leave them. It does make for a particularly useful introduction to Belfast. Much of the city’s fame is steeped in the Troubles, interesting times to be sure. The suburbs featured even more than the city centre. The Falls and the Shankill were the capitals of the troublesome antagonists. There’s something slightly weird being a tourist on an open top bus, cruising through mundane working class residential areas, safe but with a frisson of danger. Perhaps weirder still to be a resident going about your business, yet at any time grabbed in the lens of visitors cameras. Though it could be worse, and once was. A loop through the docklands is also useful, stopping of course outside the Titanic exhibition.

The tour guides each have their own patter, a comedy routine in the making, a mixture of historical details and lurid anecdotes. The latter may be shaggy dog tales, but the history is convincing. We took a couple of jaunts, and so were treated to a variety of routines. Most were racy and jocular, and one who did a drearily hilarious comic turn. 

The first stop was at St George’s Market on May Street, close to the Waterfront. This is an attractive redbrick Victorian Market from the end of the nineteenth century. Enter through the main archway into a hive of trading activity with hundreds of stalls selling books, clothes, art, antiques, hot food and snacks from friday through to sunday. The friday market dates back to the city’s formation in 1604, with fruit and veg, antiques, crafts, clothes and books. Saturday devotes itself to being specifically a food and craft fair, then sunday brings both elements together with live music thrown in. St George’s Market doubles as a music and arts venue with events ranging fron the World Irish Dance Championship to Deep Purple. 

Next door is a pub that honours a singer of my own city, Ronnie Drew. It’s disconcerting to see his face around here, but consoling. Born in Dun Laoghaire in 1934, he founded his own group with Luke Kelly and others. The Dubliners first played in O’Donoghue’s in Dublin’s Merrion Row, a favourite haunt of mine. It’s good to see them commemorated in Ireland’s second city. Ronnie Drew’s is an ornate old style bar from the 1920s, with five large snugs along the huge arched windows at the front. Once called McGettigan’s, it was renamed for Drew following his death in 2008

The next bus takes us via City Hall and on to Great Victoria Street. From the city centre we head into the leafy suburbs of the University Quarter. This quarter includes the Ulster Museum, the Botanic Gerdens and of course Queens University, Belfast. The university was founded in 1845 as an associate college of the Queens University of Ireland, along with Cork and Galway. It was intended to be a learning centre for Catholics and Presbyterians as distinct from the Anglican Trinity College Dublin. Queens is enjoying its summer hiatus at the moment. I recall Freshers week, many moons ago, where the rag mag profiled a hopeful candidate in the student elections. He was running on the surprising platform of a Gay Paisleyite, with the ne’er to be forgotten slogan: Better Gay than Taig. Taig, from the common Gaelic name Tadhg, being the Loyalist slang term for their Nationalist foe.

The main building fronting onto University Road was designed by the English architect Charles Lanyon. It is an impressive gothic redbrick with a central tower inspired by Magdalen College in Oxford. Lanyon also designed the Campanile at Trinity College Dublin and many Belfast landmarks, including the Palm House at the Botanic Gardens nearby, Belfast Castle and Crumlin Road Courthouse and Gaol. Lanyon Place is named in his honour, though the modernist slab of a railway station seems somewhat ironic.

The tour heads west towards the Falls Road, a two mile long thoroughfare heading from the city centre to Andersonstown. The area is home to the Catholic community of West Belfast. We stop at the Bobby Sands mural, one of the most famous of Belfast’s many political murals. It dates from 1998, around the corner of the Falls at Sevastapol Street, on the gable end of the Sinn Fein hq. Sands was sentenced to fourteen years in the H-Block at Long Kesh for possession of a firearm in 1981. He went on hunger strike to campaign for political prisoner status and was elected MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone. After sixty six days he died at the age of twenty seven, in May. A further nine men died before the hunger strike was called off in October. 

Further down the Falls we glimpse Divis Tower, a twenty storey residential block from the sixties. Standing 200 foot tall it was a significant landmark of the Troubles. The British army occupied the top two floors as an observation post, though they could only access it by helicopter. Residents moved back in fifteen years ago.

Turning left off the Falls, a row of murals occupies the Solidarity Wall along Northumberland Street. Alongside national and local heroes, other international revolutionaries favoured by Republicans are commemmorated. These include Palestinian, Basque and South African activists, with Nelson Mandela prominent amongst them.

Through a double gate, we leave the Falls and enter the Shankill area, a Loyalist enclave. Murals now switch to assertions of Britishness with the Union Jack and King Billy (William of Orange) signifying that you’ve crossed the divide. That divide is demarcated by the Peace Wall on Cupar Way. This was erected by the British Army in 1969 to prevent inter community strife between Nationalists and Loyalists. 

There are thirty km of walls in total, in various areas throughout Belfast. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998, following the IRA ceasefire of four years earlier, effectively brought an end to hostilities. The Peace Wall could at last live up to its name. The barrier has evolved into an open page for the amateur graffitti artist. A litany of hopes and dreams scribbled by the great unwashed, and the great and the good. National and international leaders have made their mark. Bill Clinton, a significant force in the Peace Process was here. According to our guide he contributed the quote: I never slept with that woman! I doubt it. Ironically, the symbolic importance of the wall has itself become a barrier to taking the thing down. It’s longer now than at the end of the Troubles  

Andre has a red flag, Chiang Ching’s is blue

They all have hills to fly them on except for Lin Tai Yu

Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games

Hiding out in treetops, shouting out rude names

Whistling tunes, we hide in the dunes by the seaside

Whistling tunes, we piss on the goons in the jungle

It’s a knockout

If looks could kill, they probably will

In games without frontiers

War without tears

(Games Without Frontiers is a Peter Gabriel song from his third solo album Peter Gabrel. The title is taken from a Trans European tv show of the sixties and beyond: Jeux Sans Frontiers. That line is sung by Kate Bush as an alternate chorus. British tv used the more combative title: It’s a Knockout.)

We stop along the Shankill Road where the atmosphere is muted and rather grim. I wonder if we should strike up a few verses of We’re on the One Road. But perhaps its message of togetherness might be misconstrued along here. Returning to the city centre, the bus deposits us at Donegall Square and the City Hall.

Our last night on the town brings us to Bittles Bar. Occupying a flatiron wedge at the junction of Victoria Street and Church Lane, it dates from 1868, when it was known as the Shakespeare. The literary theme continues inside the small triangular bar. A great selection of paintings are crammed into every available space with group portraits of Irish literary and sporting heroes enjoying a few pints. There’s a large canvas of Yeats, Behan, Beckett, Wilde and Joyce, while peace era iconography brings together erstwhile combatants of the Troubles, Adams and Paisley sharing a joke. The pub’s most popular poet seems to be Padraic Fiacc who gazes down, not quite benignly, at the bar. A spiky quote: Screeching gulls in a smoky bacon sky, hints at a spiky character. Christened Patrick O’Connor, he was born in Belfast, the son of a barman. His family lived in the Markets area nearby, having been burned out of their home in Lisburn. They moved to New York and Padraic grew up in the notorious Hell’s Kitchen area. A case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. He connected with his Belfast roots in the forties and returned to live here in 1956. A member of Aosdana, he died only recently, in 2019 at the grand age of 95.

Meanwhile, although the night is still young, last orders are called. I had just been extolling the benefits of Belfast in peacetime only to be made aware that we were caught in an unfree state, with antediluvian licensing hours. Ten o’clock on a Sunday night on a Bank Holiday weekend and we’re out on the street.  So it looks like I’m going to wake up in the city that does sleep. However, a stiff, and anxious, walk back to the Titanic quarter, and the wonderful Premier Inn provides a pint of Harp, or two, to take us to the midnight hour.

Belfast – 2: Titanic

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We’re staying in the Titanic Quarter, practically next door to the eponymous attraction. The tall gleaming building is a landmark in itself, embodying in its design a suggestion of the famous liner built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard nearby. Edward James Harland was born in Yorkshire in 1831 and moved to Belfast in 1854 to manage Robert Hickson’s shipyard on Queens Island. In 1858 Harland bought the shipyard from Hickson. Gustav Wilhelm Wolff from Hamburg had worked as Harland’s assistant, and soon was made a partner. Harland and Wolff prosperred, forging a lucrative partnership with the White Star shipping line. White Star exemlified high quality service for the transatlantic passenger trade. The Belfast shipyard became exclusive builders for them, providing ships on an ever more grandiose scale, culminating in the Titanic in 1912.

The decline of Belfast shipbuilding saw Queens Island left derelict. A handful of structures were listed for preservation, including the Titanic slipway and the iconic Samson and Goliath gantry cranes. These were only built in 1969 and 74, and are still in use as part of the dry dock operations of the yard. The Titanic Quarter development was proposed in the mid nineties. The Odyssey Complex was an early development which opened in the new millennnium. The Arena hosts the Belfast Giants hockey team, and is also a venue for music gigs. The Premier Inn, our hosts, was the first hotel opened here in 2010. 

The Titanic Belfast visitor attraction was proposed as a focus for the site. It was intended to emulate Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Bilbao as a prestige scheme which would inspire a regeneration of the area itself and the wider city. Overseeing the project, Dublin firm Harcourt Developments enlisted American architect Eric Kuhne and London firm Event Communications. The building echoes the outline of the huge White Star ships, standing as high as the Titanic hull on completion. Locals have given the nickname the Iceberg. The silver sheen of the building comes from its aluminium cladding, whose jagged finish also isuggest ice crystals. The visitor centre stands on the slipway where the Titanic was launched.

The Titanic Experience will take a few hours. It first immerses the visitor in the rapidly growing nineteenth century city of Belfast, then takes you from the ship’s conception, through gestation and birth, and on to that fateful voyage, and beyond. It is a story of dockland and street, nuts and bolts, the savage vastness and caprices of the sea, and of course people. The people who designed her, who toiled to make her, who were charged with sailing her, who paid to sail in her, who survived or perished, as the die would have it.

Titanic is the most famous ship ever, though it never completed its maiden voyage. Carrying 2,224 passengers and crew, she set off from Southampton to New York by way of Cherbourg and Cobh, then known as Queenstown. Hopes would have been high. Here was a voyage into a new world, upon the greatest ship afloat, proclaimed unsinkable with the best in modern safety technology. Allegedly. Third Class were better catered for by White Star than they would have been elsewhere, with cabins instead of open dormitories, their own dining rooms, a smoking room, reading room and an assembly hall. Facilities in first class were luxurious, based on the quality of the Ritz, with restaurants, gymnasium and turkish baths, A glorious Grand Staircase swept up through seven decks topped by a metal and glass dome.

She sank on 15th April 1912 off the coast of Newfoundland. Capt Edward Smith went down with the ship. One thousand five hundred people died. The names of all the dead are displayed on a huge wall as we begin our descent from the exhibition’s top floor. Stories abound, ranging from modest steerage to those of great wealth and fame. There was the unsinkable Molly Brown, who survived. Born Margaret Tobin in 1867 to Irish immigrants in Missouri. She moved to Leadville, Colorado, in her teens and married mining engineer James Brown who became wealthy through his work. A wealthy socialite, Margaret didn’t forget her poor background, and applied herself to philanthropy in the cause of women and workers. Her survival became the stuff of legend and led to her posthumous nickname

Fate smiled on others who either missed the boat or got off. Amongst those who disembarked at Cobh was Fr Francis Browne, an Irish Jesuit and photographer. He received a first class ticket from Southampton to Cobh as a gift from his uncle. On board he befriended a rich American couple who offered to pay his passage to New York. He telegraphed the bishop and the reply was swift, and negative: Get off that ship! Browne studied at Dublin’s University College with James Joyce who remembered him with a walk on part in Finnegans Wake. Even more unsinkable than his namesake Molly, he was a chaplain in the Great War and survived the Battle of the Somme, Passchandaele and many other fierce battles. Wounded five times, he was awarded the Military Cross and the Crois de Guerre. The survival of Browne’s photographs form an enduring legacy of life in the twentieth century. His photographs chronicle life in Ireland and abroad, while his record of the Titanic, its passengers and crew before their date with fate, is invaluable.

Nearing the end, with the weight of the dead above us, we descend to the depths. The Titanic rested undisturbed for more than seventy years. In 1985 Robert Ballard and Jean Luis Michel found the wreck. Celebration was spontaneous, though Ballard quickly saw the problem of joy in what was, is in effect a mass graveyard. A film by James Cameron in 1997 featured Leonardo de Caprio, a steerage passenger forging a love affair with Kate Winslet. Their celebration of life at the ship’s prow gives a photoshoot moment for visitors seeking to recreate the moment starring themselves. My companions oblige, though I must draw a veil over that.

After the full emotional experience of the Titanic spend some time on the Nomadic, parked adjacent to the visitor centre and included in the admission. The Nomadic is the Titanic in miniature. It was used as a ferry for passengers from the dockside to the Titanic anchored offshore. The interior is lovingly preserved, with some ghostly projections taking us back to the days. 

After all of that, it was time to sink a few cold ones. There are few oases this side of the Lagan. It’s a ten minute hike across a selection of bridges to the city centre. We took the Lagan Weir Bridge which curves to the west bank where it is guarded by the Big Fish. This sculpture by John Kindness was commissioned at the end of the last century as part of the urban regeneration along the riverbank. The fish is clad in ceramic scales, many with texts and images illustrating the city’s history. Aptly, it stands at the confluence of the Farset and Lagan rivers.

The Farset is the river that gave Belfast its name: the mouth of the Farset, Beal Feirste in Gaelic. The original settlement was here, and a small dockland grew up. This was covered over in the eighteenth century and is now Queen’s Square.  The buildings on the south side of the square would once have faced the quayside of the old town dock. The oldest building in Belfast survives here, and houses McHugh’s Bar. It was built as a private residence in 1711 and by the following decade a public house was in operation. McHugh’s serves food and drink and there are lively evening music sessions. Its large outdoor terrace facing the square was perfect for a perfectly sunny day. Our own trio was augmented by a trio of friendly locals and we fell into the heaven of lively conversation and chilled beer in the afternoon sun.

The Albert Memorial Clock dominates the square. Built to honour the Queen’s Consort who died in 1861, it is Belfast’s very own leaning tower. Being built on land reclaimed from the River it leans four feet off the vertical and stands, if precariously, over a hundred feet tall. It was once a haunt of prostitutes. Perhaps it was a form of sympathetic magic, or just that they, like the tower, had the time and the inclination.

The area has moved upmarket in recent times. The Cathedral Quarter is named for St Anne’s Cathedral nearby. Once a warehouse zone this warren of cobblestone lanes is the go to area for city nightlife. Such colourful names as the Thirsty Goat, the Cloth Ear, the Chubby Cherub and Bunsen Burgers clamour for your drinking and dining pleasure. We wander for a time in the summer haze of evening through a long narrow laneway beneath neon umbrellas with a caption saying there’s only seven types of rain in Belfast, all seven days a week. But not this weekend.

Belfast – 1

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Belfast is Ireland’s second city, and the capital of Northern Ireland. It is a two hour train ride from Dublin Connolly on the Enterprise; all going well. I was last here just over ten years ago, taking another jaunt north with my younger son to see the Belfast Giants ice hockey team at the Odyssey Arena. Images of the frozen north were amplified within the confines of the ice rink, and in truth were not dispelled in the great outdoors; but this time Belfast was caught in the embrace of a big blue sky, and it was sweltering.

I went up with two friends and we booked into the Premier Inn for two nights. It’s just across the Lagan river in the Titanic Quarter, a new development growing around the dockside and the famous shipyards, and adjacent to the Odyssey Complex. Technically, we’re staying in County Down, and this will be the first time I’ve overnighted in that particular county. Most of Belfast is in County Antrim.

As it turned out, the Enterprise didn’t boldly go where it was supposed to, instead depositing us at Lisburn, nine miles short. The rail service put on a few busses to ferry us into the city. It was a cheerful, if cramped half hour, us southern sardines standing and swaying as the cheerful driver kept his foot to the floor and an entertaining patter going with those of us nearby. He delivered us to the terminal on Great Victoria Street on the west side of the city centre.

We first put into The Crown Liquor Saloon, it being on our hit list and also being the first pub we saw. Travelling on a hot day is thirsty work. Originally this was called the Railway Tavern for the principal Railway station across the road. The first station was built in 1848 in the first flowering of Irish railroads. Glory days are made to pass and it was closed in 1971, and demolished to make way for a modern block. A new station openend in 1995 adjoining the Great Northern Mall shopping centre. The name Great Northern here alludes to the Great Northern Railway which absorbed the original Ulster Railway of 1838. 

Meanwhile, the pub was renovated and renamed the Crown in 1885. It was conceived as a Victorian gin palace, as the lavishly ornate bars of the era were known. Publican Patrick Flanagan employed Italian craftsmen who were engaged in the construction of Catholic churches, enjoying a boom in Belfast at that time. The Italians certainly stamped the Crown with their exuberance. The colourful tiled exterior is eye catching and the effect continues in the glowing interior, also decorated with tiles and illuminated by gas lamps. Stained glass partitions separate a total of ten snugs with original antique fittings. So it was that we three amigos collapsed into the Crown and took possession of a snug.

Belfast city centre is laid out in grid form indicating its relatively modern conception. Its population stands at 350,000 in the urban area, with 650,000 in the wider metropolitan area. Yet two hundred years ago the city population was barely a tenth of that. It may have had a castle in Norman times, but the largest castle of note in the vicinity was Carrickfergus, still is, ten miles north on the shores of the Lough. Carrickfergus was essentially the capital of Ulster since 1177 when John De Courcy established Norman power there shortly after Strongbow’s invasion and Henry II’s assertion of overlordship. English power was stalled by Edward de Bruce’s campaign in the fourteenth century. Edward was the brother of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, and was himself proclaimed King of Ireland in 1315. He captured Carrickfergus but three years later he was defeated and slain by Anglo Irish forces at the Battle of Faughart, near Dundalk. Edward’s reign was brief, and rarely extended past Ulster, but English rule remained stalled for a further three centuries. 

It wasn’t until 1615 that Sir Arthur Chichester founded Belfast as a town. Belfast Castle was established, built on the ruling O’Neill’s tower house and becoming a focal point as the Plantation of Ulster took off. That castle burnt down a century later. The current Belfast Castle is physically remote from the ancient castle which fell into ruin and then oblivion. It was built in 1870 on the Donegall family’s deerpark on the outskirts of Belfast at Cave Hill. It is actually a grand Victorian residence, in the Scots Baronial style, though in the hands of Belfast City Council for the last century and is open to the public and may also be booked for events and weddings. 

English, Manx and Huguentot settlers predominated in the early colonisation of Belfast. It was the Huguenots and Scottish Presbyterians who introduced the linen trade which fuelled the increasing growth of the town. Through the 19th century, Belfast establsihed itself as one of the major linen producers in the world and acquired the nickname Linenopolis. Try saying that after a few jars.

Our cross city navigation was easy enough. Great Victoria Street is a busy thoroughfare lined by tall buildings running north south and defining the western edge of the city centre. Next door to the station is the Europa Hotel, once dubbed the most bombed hotel in world, having suffered  thirty six bomb attacks during the Troubles; being the conflict in Norrthern Ireland that lasted for thirty years until 1998. Yet the Europa endures. It was built on the site of the original railway station and was the popular haunt for journalists in those troubled times. Today the twelve stoey tower is a four star luxury hotel with two hundred and seventy bedrooms, and promises a quiet night’s sleep. 

Adjacent is the Grand Opera House. This opened in 1895 with a thousand seater auditorium hosting variety shows and musicals. Over the years performers have included Sarah Bernhardt, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Orson Welles and Luciano Pavarotti. The onset of the Troubles saw a decline in fortunes and developers wanted to pull it down. Sense prevailed, and the building was bought by the Arts Council and listed in 1974. A recent refurbishment has restored the plush ambience of its glory days. Theatre tours can be booked and the upcoming programme includes a heady mix of musical entertsinment, with Oliver, the Rocky Horror Show and the Buddy Holly Story on the bill.

At right angles, the parallel avenues of Chichester Street and May Street head due east, reaching the Lagan River and Belfast Lough just beyond another Victoria Street, which must cause some confusion. Mind you, there is something of an obsession with that particular monarch hereabouts, so inextricably is the city linked to the Victorian age.

Either route takes us through the busy commercial centre of Belfast, and midway along we find City Hall. Belfast City Hall does what a city hall should, providing the centre point and pivotal landmark for the city it serves. It was conceived in 1888 when Belfast, at last, was granted city status by the Queen, Queen Victoria of course. From a population of only twenty thousand in 1800 it was the largest city in Ireland by then, passing the three hundred thousand mark, so it was not before time that it was recognised as a city. 

The City Hall and grounds occupies Donegall Square, named in honour of the Chichester family, founders of the city. Arthur Chichester was made Earl of Donegall in 1647 and the family castle once stood nearby. The county itself is now spelt with one l: Donegal. The building was designed by Alfred Brumwell Thomas, an English architect. Completed in 1906 it is faced in white Portland stone, a shining palace in Neo Baroque style. There are echoes of the phanthom fortress long gone, with a tower in each corner and a soaring copper dome capping the centrepiece column. The grounds are strewn with monuments to Queen Victoria (again), Edward James Harland of shipyards fame and those who sailed on the Titanic. There is also the Garden of Remembrance and Cenotaph. The extensive lawns accomodate the public. They are out in force on this most glorious of days, but can relax here on any day, to take the sunsine and forget such cares that life, and history can bring.