54:39.90 N, 005:40.40 W

 

Wednesday dawned pretty foul and wet with the wind beginning to pick up so we moved the short distance to the marina at Bangor. The instructions over the radio told us to pick any berth between F3 and F15, so we turned in to F10, which seemed fine. However on mooring up we realised that the instruction had not been arithmetic but geographic: odd numbers were on the other side of the pontoon! So in the pouring rain we had to untie and then repeat the whole sequence, ending up all of 5 meters away on F11, having driven round the end of the pontoon.

 

Bangor from the marina entrance

 

The staff couldn’t have been more welcoming and nothing seemed too much trouble. In fact this attitude turned out not to be peculiar to the marina but to just about everyone in Northern Ireland. James decided that a day ashore was required, so the marina staff arranged a hire car to be collected the following morning from near the airport. However the railway line runs every 15 minutes or so from Bangor to ‘Titanic Quarter’.

 

The next morning, Thursday, the man from ‘Sixt’ was indeed waiting at 07:50 when the train arrived at ‘Titanic’, which is just under the giant yellow gantry with ‘Harland and Wolff’ written on it. The day cleared up and by 11am or so was getting to be mostly fine, so a good choice of a day to explore. Our destination was the Mountains of Morne which are only 60km or so away, and we decided to park at ‘Bloody Bridge’ near Newcastle and walk up Slieve Donnard from there, at least as far as the Morne Wall. We passed myriad contented looking sheep, highland cattle and ponies before arriving at a most impressive wall which is about 2.5m high by 70cm wide and runs over the tops of the highest hills (around 850m) in a set of straight lines. It’s pretty useless, but apparently provided welcome employment when it was built in the 1930s. Although the paths are in very good shape and distinct we saw only 2 or three other walkers, all of whom stopped to chat.

 

Some of the locals

 

 

Views from the col near Slieve Donnard

 

The wall, running straight as a die up to the peaks of the mountains

 

After walking perhaps 12 to 15 km, and climbing and descending about 800m, we drove back to Belfast via a scenic and circuitous route before returning the car and catching the train (a slow, stopping, one this time) back to Bangor, and so to supper and an early night. Tomorrow promises to be fair, so we paid the marina in order to be clear to set off at dawn.