July 27, 2024

July 27, 2024

After breakfast we walked another section of the city walls. Derry is called the Walled City for good reason. The walls are the most intact of any Irish city. They protected the original rectangular town center, but now they are swallowed up by the greatly expanded city. We walked the western section overlooking the Catholic neighborhood called the Bogside. It once was the swampland bordering the island-city of Derry.

We exited our city wall walk at Bishop’s Gate. Here the street has a modern “Peace” wall alongside to separate the feuding Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

We walked down into the Bogside neighborhood to look at the murals adorning the buildings. This was a peaceful way of protesting. Later the Bogside was barricaded, and a "Free Derry" mural painted to proclaim independence from English Protestant rule. It helped ignite the Bloody Sunday massacre where peaceful protesters were gunned down by British soldiers. There is a memorial to this tragedy. I must have been lingering too long as I got put to work repainting the mural.

We returned to our hotel and checked out, leaving our bags in the car. We stopped in the nearby tourist office where we learned Amelia Earhart landed here on her solo Atlantic crossing in 1932. With the church spires and river she mistakenly thought she had made it to her planned destination of Paris.

Next door is the Tower Museum housed in a replica tower house. This excellent museum covers the long history of Derry with a good balance of movies and storyboards. The one item of note in the Christian era was a colorful Celtic High Cross. It is a reminder that just like Greek statues, the crosses in Ireland were also likely painted. With color the Bible stories illustrated are easier to comprehend.

The museum goes on to cover the plantation of Scotch Protestants, its name change to Londonderry, the building of the walls, followed by the famous Siege of Derry in 1689 during the Williamite War. The town famously was saved from destruction by a group of apprentice boys who barred the city gates. Londonderry became a bastion for Protestants in a hostile sea of Irish Catholics.

A major theme running through Derry history was emigration. People left throughout its history. Even Scotch-Irish Protestants emigrated. The parents of Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson were some of the most famous Scotch-Irish emigres. In the industrial era, Derry became a center of shipping and shirt making.

The last history section was the Troubles. It was the result of a Protestant minority wanting to maintain control using laws to limit housing, voting, and jobs. The persecuted copied our Civil Rights movement. It turned bloody when the Army showed up.

There is another whole wing about the 1588 Spanish Armada. After losing the battle, the Spanish ships retreated around the British Isles. Most ships were lost off the Irish coast. One was salvaged just offshore in 1971. Divers found lots of artifacts.

We retrieved our car and left Derry. On the way out of town, we stopped in the Unionist neighborhood to see the Protestant murals. One recalls the Apprentice Boys closing the gates of the city that we just learned about.

We drove east to our next guesthouse in Bushmills, near the Giants Causeway. Its too early to check in so we drove west along the Antrim coast to Royal Portrush Golf Club. The British Open will be played here next year. We saw Rory McIlroy's scorecard when he shot the course record of 61 here at the age of just sixteen!

Our next stop is just east at Dunluce Castle. It is in total ruins but it dramatically sits on a crag off the coast. The sun is in the wrong direction. We wait a few minutes until some cloud cover rolls in to get a better photo.

On our way back through Bushmills, we find a car overturned in the middle of town. We can't imagine how this happened. Either way this is going to shut down tourist traffic in the area. It is already backing up. No bus is going to make it past. We will have to find another spot for dinner.

We checked into our guesthouse and our landlady gave us a good dinner recommendation. She said to park at the Causeway Hotel on the coastline. The parking fee will be deducted from our dinner bill. It was a great suggestion. We ate in the bar on overstuffed chairs. Both the food and drinks were great and the lunch crowd was long gone.

After dinner we hiked the long sloping walkway down to the sea. Its almost a mile to the Giants Causeway. This is a huge peninsula of hexagonal basalt columns that juts out into the sea. They formed when a large block of lava slowly cooled, contracted, and cracked. Giants Causeway is the most famous example of this cool phenomenon.

We spend the next hour stepping over these flat-topped columns finding good spots for photos. Even though the tour buses are long gone, there are still too many people for the best photos. Aimee and I are both underwhelmed. We have seen these basalt columns now in numerous places around the world. They are not rare at all. This would be a really cool site if we were the only ones here.