We’re in it for the craic

Not sure what Paul is doing but we are off on our adventures again. This time we are going to walk the coast of Northern Ireland and, as the title says, we are doing it for the experience and not raising money for charity this time. As this is not for charity we don’t have the usual raft of helpers driving our bags from stop to stop, so Helen & Sue kindly offered to take on those duties – Helen helping for the first half.

We stayed overnight in Newry before starting off on our walk, the weather for the day did not look promising. The modern Irish name for Newry is An tIúr which means “the yew tree”. An tIúr is a shortening of Iúr Cinn Trá, “yew tree at the head of the strand”, which was formerly the most common Irish name for Newry.^[8] This relates to an apocryphal story that Saint Patrick planted a yew tree there in the 5th century.  A cathedral city, it is the episcopal seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dromore. In 2002, as part of the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II, Newry was granted city status.

We started off with a long descent down to the city, crossing the Newry River and the heading back up until we exited the city on the way to the Mourne Mountains . No rain yet but certainly overcast and pretty cold for June.

Some nice walking for a while, undulating roads, distant glimpses of the Mourne Mountains, pretty manicured gardens and the ever-inquisitive cows – it felt really good to back out walking again.

Our planned route took us past the Mourne Mountains, but, as we were feeling strong and the weather hadn’t turned yet, we took a diversion to see the Spelga Dam. This was quite a hike up into the hills, maybe not the best idea of the first day of walking. Who knew that Santa lived in Country Down – we didn’t take the time to go see him. The hillsides were awash with rhododendrons gone mad, providing some nice views on the way to the top of the hill. Spelga reservoir and dam were built as part of a project that had origins in the idea of supplying water to Belfast in 1894. The Spelga Reservoir itself was developed between 1953 and 1957. As part of the construction, the B27 road was rebuilt above the reservoir to replace the original road submerged by the construction. At the reservoir we took a quick lunch break and that was when the rain started.

The rain didn’t let up until we got to our B&B near Newcastle. The remainder of the days walk was downhill though, but not too steep thankfully. We stopped for an ice cream (in the rain) in Tollymore Forest Park – what doesn’t show is that within seconds of taking his first slurp, Paul’s ice cream deposited itself on the ground – thankfully the nice lady ion the kiosk replaced it without charge. Tollymore Forest Park was the first state forest park in Northern Ireland and was established on 2 June 1955. It covers an area of 630 hectares (1,600 acres) at the foot of the Mourne Mountains and has views of the surrounding mountains and the sea at nearby Newcastle. The Shimna flows through the park where it is crossed by 16 bridges, the earliest dating to 1726. 

Wet, and tired, we finally got to our B&B. Tomorrow we head for Portaferry.