Sunday - Musical cheers

We woke to another brilliant, beautiful day and breakfast in the conservatory. Our hosts at Lillikoi B&B were a lovely couple, very well-travelled, and with some hilarious stories. If you’re ever in need of accommodation near Derry, I’d definitely recommend Lillikoi.

Before hitting the road to County Mayo we went for a look at the walled city of Derry (or, as the road signs all put it, in order to satisfy both unionists and nationalists, “Londonderry/Derry”). We parked on the east side and walked over the Peace Bridge, designed to be reminiscent of a handshake, with two large support/suspension pillars, one on each side on opposite angles but leaning towards each other. The bridge design is meaningful in the healing of the historical separation of Derry, whereby unionists/ Protestants moved to the east side of the river and nationalists/ Catholics stayed on the west side.

Adjacent to the city side of the Peace Bridge is the Guildhall, a stunning town hall building which now houses a very interesting museum about the Plantation of Ulster – that is, the plantation of people from England and Scotland to colonise northern Ireland. The stained glass windows in the Guildhall are a sight to behold.

 And I very much enjoyed the Scots Gaelic(?) signage.

Finally we went for a walk around the city walls, a stroll of about a mile with great views, helpful signage summarising the history – and cannons still sitting in their long-ago strategic positions.

Then it was off to Co. Mayo and William Bald’s musical bridge at Bellacorick. It was a pretty long drive, and the Irish roads live up to their reputation as being not very good – the best it got was one lane and a shoulder in each direction, with a very occasional passing lane. Some of the very small villages had a set of traffic lights – at one place, for no apparent reason we had to stop and wait for at least two minutes… while nothing happened – there were no vehicles needing to cross or turn into the “main” (I use that term loosely) road. However the trip was redeemed by the scenery – most of the way was through quintessential Irish lush rolling countryside; plus now we’re in the Republic we are in km/h territory (to match the car), rather than mph as in Northern Ireland. (Not that I’m quite sure most of the time what the actual speed limit is… I figure the approach “go with the flow” should see me right.)

Once in Co. Mayo we went through some towns whose names have become familiar through the history research: Ballina ("Bell-in-aah", where we spotted Barret Street, perhaps named for Dr Barret, father of William's second wife Matilda?), and Crossmolina ("Cross-ma-line-a", a cute wee place), and finally to Bellacorick. The Bellacorick bridge is a low, multi-arched stone bridge that crosses a stream at a crossroads, by a now-defunct pub. The idea with the bridge is that you run a stone along the capping stones, and it makes “music”. Now don’t go thinking melody or scale or tuneful music of any sort – but the capping stones have clearly different tones, and some of them when struck ring and resonate as if they’re made of steel. One of the things that’s really neat about the bridge is how obvious it is that people have been playing there for many, many years: on both sides of the bridge, the surface of the capping stones on the side nearest the road is worn smooth, while on the outer areas the surface is still rough. (One of the things that’s not really neat about the bridge is that there’s no footpath, so playing has to be interrupted every time a car goes past, as you flatten yourself against the side wall for the sake of safety!)

Once we were done there we drove down through the bogs area to Castlebar, home of William Bald and his family from 1809 until 1820-something. One of the projects William did in that time was to map and report on the bogs (I’ve got a pic of one of the maps as my Facebook cover page now). It must have been pretty difficult work in some parts, as the land was rough and there were (and are) few roads or inhabitants. The landscape going into Bellacorick and the first part of the road from Bellacorick to Castlebar is quite different from what we saw earlier in the day. It’s brown and scrubby rather than green, and there are big, rounded, barren-looking hills in the middle distance. The road reminded me of (a much longer version of) Collins Road near Hamilton, which undulates (bumps its way) across the peat swamp.