Just beachy…

The guest house in Portaferry was another strange place. Apparently closed but still taking bookings. It was clean and comfortable enough so no complaints. Portaferry played quite a part in the Irish linen industry. Many of the women in the town were employed to embroider handkerchiefs for Thomas Somerset and Co., one of the major linen companies in Ireland. The company realised that the women were more productive in the summer due to the light, so installed the first electric light outside of Belfast in Ulster. Each house with a working woman was given one light fitting and bulb. There was also a bus service introduced to bring more women from the Ards Peninsula to Portaferry to work in the factory that Somerset built.

We had originally planned to walk along the shores of Strangford Lough to Newtownards but a recce earlier in the week showed the road to be potentially very dangerous so we had a change of plan. We headed south from Portaferry along the loch shore along a nice quiet road with good views of the loch.

Continuing down around the bottom of the Ards Peninsula, the tide was out (it runs at 4 m/s in the channel!) we came upon an abandoned red phone box – the phone os still present inside, smothered in weeds. Rumour has its that if you use your credit card then the phone still works.

You will need the sound up for this. We passed by a herd of young bullocks and played then some Bach. They seemed fascinated !

We passed by Quintin Castle which has been extensively refurbished and changed hands most recently in late 2006. The latest owner had trouble with upkeep, in particular paying of renovation works, forcing the castle into the hands of administrators in 2012. In June 2013 Quintin Castle was sold (asking £1.65m with 22 acres) by NAMA to the Tayto Group  (owned by the Hutchinson family’s Manderley Food Group), which in July 2016 applied for permission to use the Castle as an 8-bedroom private function venue for weddings, visiting customers, training and conferences. Then, after a nice walk on one of the sandy beached we passed the “stump”, or remains, of the Kearney Windmill before triggering the goose alarm in a nearby house – they made so much noise as we were taking a photo the old lady owner came out to see what was up!

It really was a lovely walk today, past so many lovely beaches – it was pity the wind was so strong and so cold. Nevertheless we managed another walk on a deserted beach (that’s Paul in the distance – he had to stop for a pee). We stopped to chat to a man laying out seaweed to dry on the breakwater. The seaweed is Dulse and has all kinds of therapeutic qualities – he sells it, dried, for £10 a pound bag at the weekend markets.

It felt very weird that the whole sea front, villages of Cloughy, Ringboy and Portavogie has no pubs, no cafes and no restaurants. There was, however a very old shipwreck on Portavogie beach, a seal in Portavogie harbour and finally a cafe where we stopped for a bit of lunch (walking into the headwind was very wearying). We took a quick photo at the easternmost point of Northern Ireland in Ballyhalbert and finished our days walking at Ballywalter and has a nice sit in the sun, with an ice cream, while waiting for Helen to pick us up and take us back to Newtownards for the start of tomorrows walk.