craven.fr

This is an article in my ongoing series about our trip through the British Isles. Earlier articles include the Introduction,Stonehenge, Oxford, Driving to Wales, Anglesey, Crossing the Irish Sea, Dublin, and Northern Ireland.

The TV programs in Northern Ireland were all abuzz with the weekend's big event: the Tall Ships were coming to Belfast! This was a very big deal there as it was the first big international festival Belfast had been able to host in over forty years because of the Troubles, so a lot of political and economic hopes were being pinned on it being a success: it was seen as an important sign of Belfast returning to normalcy and prosperity. My concern, though, was that because people were coming in from all over to see the Tall Ships, roads around the harbour were closed off—and I was supposed to be getting on a ferry at noon!

These worries, and the fact that it was grey and rainy, made us decide not to take any risks trying to visit the Belfast port area (or the Tall Ships, which I have seen before, in Boston), and instead try to get straight to the ferry terminal. As it turned out, though, the Stena line terminal is well north of downtown Belfast, and since we were coming down from the north, we got straight in without running into any traffic whatsoever—and without really getting to form any idea of what Belfast looks like! So instead of missing our boat we were two hours early: as was nearly everyone else, since the same news reports about Belfast traffic being expected to be horrible with road closings everywhere had scared everyone into coming early!

Anyway, I was fine with being early but had held out some hope that we'd be able to see the Tall Ships from our own ship, but since we were in different areas that was impossible—and as the rain worsened, you couldn't see much of anything out the windows anyway. Our boat this time was not as large as the Ulysses (obviously), but was still enormous, with shops, casino, restaurants—and the all-important children's area. It was a high speed catamaran ferry, and it's a shorter distance from Belfast to Stanraer, so the whole crossing only took two hours. James, as usual on ferries, went nuts in the Curious George themed children's area (click here for pictures). All in all Stena Line had a great family service: for older kids there was a treasure hunt, and the play area was more elaborate than on our other ferry, and even got a visit from George himself. Still, James prefered the first ferry, I think. His preferences are hard to fathom at his age anyway, when he often prefers an empty plastic bottle to some 20€ toy, so I guess it's not all that surprising!

Two things struck me during the crossing. The first was reading the Belfast Telegraph newspaper for the day. While the Tall Ships and accompanying optimism were the main theme, page after page had small stories about this or that person being beaten to death by this or that group of Catholics or Protestants. In France any one of these murders would have been a major national news story (one was beaten to death by a spiked baseball bat!), and yet here all anyone talked about was how great it was that the Troubles were "over". (To be clear, this was not all stuff that had happened the day before, a lot of it was related to trials and media fallout of incidents that went back a ways.) Clearly though, the amount of tension that remains in Northern Ireland can be pretty shocking and scary to an outsider, even if for those there it seems like nothing in comparison to the past. We had a great time in Northern Ireland, and it is a beautiful place, but reading that paper made me feel a bit relieved to have that part of the trip behind us all the same.

The other thing that struck me happened ordering food at the buffet. I got a steak pie and Emilie had fish and chips. For whatever reason ordering that ordinary English food, the same thing I'd be able to get in the US or Canada, made it really hit me how amazing it was that English civilisation had spread from such a tiny country to take over whole continents (North America and Australia) and so many other parts of the world. England is so tiny and yet there are now over a billion English speakers, who for all their diversity still share so many profoundly English traits. Things like finding names like Bob or Mary normal-sounding, eating eggs for breakfast, or having grown up with nursery rhymes like "Ring around the Rosy" or "Pop goes the Weasel". That England, and English culture, should have spread so far and wide and not so many others—even other Western European ones—is pretty flabbergasting. I know it's not a very profound insight, but it really hit me for some reason on that ferry.

Anyway, by early afternoon we were driving off the boat and into Scotland. We weren't done traveling yet, though, as our beds awaited us in Falkirk, a couple hours east of Stanraer. By all accounts Edinburgh is the best place to visit in Scotland, but because of the Edinburgh festival hotel prices there were sky-high. So we were staying in Falkirk instead, which would place us in a good position to visit Edinburgh (only 50 minutes away) as well as some interesting sights in its own environs (more on that in the next article).

Here, as in Anglesey and Northern Ireland, I was treated to some gorgeous roads, twisting through sea and mountain and pasture with constant variety. Unlike Wales, though, here the highway itself was a small-two lane affair, not a four-lane divided highway (which can never have the same charm). And unlike Northern Ireland, because I always had the sea to my left and the hills to my right, I could see further ahead and never had to worry about sudden descents. So, I never had to drive slowly or feel hurried by impatient locals behind me. I could just zip along, stress-free, and enjoy the scenery. The rain had more or less stopped at this point, and it was a very fun drive.

Once we got inland we ran into some rush-hour traffic jams when passing through Glasgow, but eventually we made it to our hotel and rested up, preparing to visit some Scottish sites "for real" the next day.