You will remember – because you’re weird and you’re reading everything I’ve ever written in chronological order – that our day spent in Northern Ireland during our Princess Cruises UK cruise aboard Sky Princess was one that we decided to enjoy on an organised excursion. On the off-chance that you’re not weird and you don’t remember that because this is the first thing you’ve read on this site and you haven’t already decided whether it will be the last as well, then you can read a little bit about what we’d been up to prior to this, when we took a look at the Giant’s Causeway. There are pictures there too!
The remainder of our time ashore while the ship awaited us back in Belfast would include a drive-by test of tedium and two photo stops.
“Does everyone here like golf?” asked our excursion guide from the front of the bus. We were near the back so may have missed some positive excitement from nearer where she was sitting, but to our ears it sounded like this question was met with silence.
“Who here has heard of the Open Golf Championship?” Yes, we’d heard of it, having not lived our lives to this point in oubliettes, but didn’t feel in any mood to encourage someone who sounded like she was a closet cheerleader for a sport we rank as only marginally less a crime against humanity than Formula 1 and basketball.
“We’re so proud to have hosted the Open!” she positively squealed, as our bus took us past Royal Portrush Golf Club on one side and a static caravan park on the other. “That’s where the TV crews were set up!” she continued, possibly expecting an ooh or an aah. She then mentioned some players’ names, I think, or maybe she described what a hole was. It was golf stuff. The memories of this period on this cruise excursion have slipped from my mind, I’m terribly, terribly sorry to say.
A quick turnaround by the bus had us soon retracing our route to Portrush from the Giant’s Causeway back to a place along the road where we could all get out and take a look at and photograph Dunluce Castle from a distance. It was a nice-looking ruin, and possibly would have looked more foreboding with stormier skies, but the views to it and across the grassland out to sea were very nice and not in any way golf-related which probably disappointed our guide who likely would’ve killed to be able to tell us all how many yards there were to the wall and that we’d probably need a Number 5 Sand-Niblick from here.
Dunluce Castle has existed in some form since the thirteenth century, although the ruins of what you can see these days were additions made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when first the Clan MacDonnell seized Antrim and set about improving the defences and living quarters, and then La Girona of the Spanish Armada was wrecked ashore nearby with great loss of life, a salvageable and sizeable amount of cannons that could be used, and treasures that could be sold to pay for extra work on the structure.
Our final photo stop of the day would be to the Portaneevy Car Park. A car park!? They are spoiling us on this tour! But wait, it’s not the car park that’s the thing to take photos of here, it’s the views from it, and they were definitely worth seeing if you get as giddy as a goat when someone says the magic word “islands” to you.
Looking northwest we could see Carrick-a-Rede, a small island just off the coast of County Antrim, connected to the mainland by a rope bridge. For centuries the gap between the island and the land was a route for salmon to swim through and so local fishermen would rig up netting to catch hundreds per day. By 2002 this was down to a couple of hundred across an entire season thanks to overfishing, nearby pollution, or the salmon finally catching on that they could swim on the other side of the island and not end up on someone’s plate by the end of the day.
To the northeast we could see another island, though one considerably farther away. This was Rathlin Island and it’s the most northerly point of Northern Ireland. Our guide pointed out that the wind and currents in this area often made landing on the island, or even passing through the strait, a very dangerous endeavour. Its small size also belies the fact that it’s been host to some interesting historical events:
- the first Viking raid on Ireland landed on Rathlin;
- Robert the Bruce sought refuge on the island;
- Sir Francis Drake was instrumental in massacring Scottish and Irish refugees in 1575;
- during the first world war, German U-boats struck a naval vessel and a passenger cargo ship off the coast of Rathlin with survivors ending up on the island.
Beyond Rathlin we could see more land on the horizon, and that land turned out to be Scotland. In fact, what we were looking at, and what you’re seeing in the photo below, is the Mull of Kintyre, immortalised or brutalised (opinions differ) by Paul McCartney and Wings in 1977. We’ve had to add this experience to our list of countries we’ve seen from other countries. Us travellers: we’ve got lists of everything.
The video below is a collection of three smashed-together clips taken from these photo stops. You want fancy editing, then you look for someone else’s video from the Country Antrim coastline.
This concludes the excursion we took through Princess Cruises for our day in Northern Ireland. In the next post in this series I’ll cover the sailaway and evening’s activities on board Sky Princess ahead of our arrival in Liverpool, the final port on this short cruise.