Our hotel in Newtownards was perfectly serviceable even if it wasn’t in the most scenic of locations – the view from my bedroom window was a wall about 1 foot away!. We had walked up to Ballywalter on the coast yesterday and then Helen picked us up and took us to Newtownards for the night. Today we would walk back to Ballywalter and then up to Donaghadee. During the Great Famine, which resulted from the dependence of small tenants and cottiers on a blighted potato crop, the largest Newtownards local landowner, Lord Londonderry, rejected rent reductions on grounds of “personal inconvenience”. By 1847 the 800 inhabitants of the town were witness to “emaciated and half-famished souls” queuing at soup kitchens and overflowing the newly built workhouse. Despite Lord Londonderry’s objection, with the upgrading of the road to Donaghadee, several public works programs for famine relief were instigated.
Walking eastwards out through Newtownards there was an extensive array of plaques and murals showing the local affiliation. The tower in the last picture is the Scrabo Tower, a 135 feet (41 m) high 19th-century lookout tower or folly that stands on Scrabo Hill. It provides wide views and is a landmark that can be seen from afar – we saw it from Portaferry (16 miles / 25 km away). It was built as a memorial to Charles Vane 3rd, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry and was originally known as the Londonderry Monument.
As we finished our cross country jaunt we came back to Ballywalter and could see the sea again with the Belfast / Isle of Man or Liverpool ferry also visible. The Scrabo Tower was still visible also in an area dominated by rolling fields and large farm buildings. King Billy got quite a few mentions on walls as well – also called William of Orange because he was from Orange in the Dutch Republic. He married his cousin Mary, which later gave him a claim to the English crown where he became King William III of England.
The walk from Ballywalter up to Donaghadee was right beside the sea for the most part and we took advantage of some softer underfoot terrain by walking on the beach when possible. As one stage we did have to race the incoming tide to make sure we could get to a handy exit spot from the beach!
Arriving on Donaghadee the wind was calm and the sun was (sort of) out, so we wandered up to the top of the harbour with some nice views back to the pretty town and of the lighthouse. The bottom left picture shows the route of the North Channel swim, it typically starts at Donaghadee and finishes on Scotland’s Rhins of Galloway – a minimum distance of 34.5 km (21.4 miles). The World Open Water Swimming Association notes that the North Channel is part of the Ocean’s Seven series. This is a set of seven long-distance open-water swims considered the marathon swimming equivalent of the Seven Summits mountaineering challenge. No ice cream today as the opportunity for a Guinness / beer in the sunshine was too good to be missed.
Tomorrow promises to be a very wet and windy day as we walk (a thankfully shorter route) to Bangor.
