Ireland - the mystic East
Wee cups of tea, Titanic and a few of the most mysterious tombs in Europe
You know for sure you are in Ireland when within moments of arrival at your hotel, there’s a knock at the door and two ‘wee’ cups of tea magically appear.
We were on the first day of a road trip up the mystical East coast from Dublin to Belfast, taking in many sensational sights along the way.
We had flown in to Dublin the afternoon before and picked up a Budget hire car for the short drive to Drogheda, close to Newgrange. That night, we stayed at the Scholars Townhouse Hotel, where the rooms are decorated in an eclectic if not eccentric style. Ours had a beautiful four-poster antique bed. We could not have had a more friendly welcome.
After a not-so-wee Irish breakfast with white and black puddings that were lip-smackingly good, we headed off down the beautiful Boyne Valley, setting for one of the most significant battles in European history in 1690.
Back then Catholic ambitions to re-take the English crown were finally vanquished by King William, the protestant usurper (Spoiler alert: Some may not see it like that). Then we drove on to Newgrange.
Nobody could have prepared us for the magnificent neolithic tombs that cover the whole area. They are vast, absolutely vast. More than 5,000 years old, they pre-date not only Stonehenge but also the Great Pyramids and the early civilisation of Crete. The craziest thing is, we have virtually no idea who built them or why or how.
We drove on to the Europa Hotel in Belfast, a place that has so much history. At one point, this was the most bombed hotel in Europe and a home for so many journalistic colleagues. Today the only bombs were chocolate ones. We ate in the hotel restaurant that evening and it was pretty good, I confess.
By now we were acclimatising ourselves to that Belfast accent - some of it sounded, to our ears, a bit like a dialect of Klingon to begin with but within an hour or two, we were fully in tune. A wee bit, anyway.
The following morning, we headed to the Titanic Quarter for the Titanic Experience. It was a bit disappointing. Firstly, it was heaving on a Mothers’ Day weekend which made seeing or reading anything hugely difficult. Secondly, it was a grim windy, wet day and even enjoying the views from outside of that spectacular building was pretty difficult.
We went back to the Europa where we found some very lovely locals eagerly expecting a ceilidh band to start up. I have to say it was very welcoming and also extremely entertaining. We could easily have spent all day there but we had to check in for our next hotel, The Titanic.
This hotel is probably less than 100 yards from the exhibition and has Titanic artwork and rivets everywhere. We ate that night in the bar, once a place where designers worked day and night, creating huge ships on blueprints.
It was not cheap but worth every penny.
The following morning, we made a wee detour to the Crumlin Road Gaol - a gruesome place with a long history. Today, you can even hold your wedding there. Seems a bit strange to me.
As we started to head south for the flight home, we arrived in Warrenpoint. It is sadly best known as the location of a terrible ambush of British Paratroops during the Troubles. I actually covered it at the time as a young reporter, interviewing parents of one of the young soldiers from London who was killed. As I recall, he was just 18.
Today, Warrenpoint is expanding. A new bridge soon will connect the North of Ireland with the South across the Newry River and, when we arrived, the sun was shining on a beautiful afternoon.
We sat on a the terrace of our hotel - The Whistledown - where, in the words of the song, ‘the Dark Mourne sweeps down to the sea’. We sat for a couple of hours watching the sun set over the water. Magical. And I thought of that poor lad who had been killed, and all the others on both sides. For what? Nothing, another life wiped out and deprived its future.
How we got there
We flew from London Heathrow to Dublin on a scheduled Aer Lingus flight - a brand new Airbus 320 Neo. Lovely.
Accommodation (hotels all booked through booking.com)
Scholars Townhouse Hotel, Drogheda - £145 double room, with antique four-poster bed
Europa Hotel, Belfast - £180, double superior room
Titanic Hotel, Belfast - £397, double superior room (expensive, but worth it as a one-off)
Whistledown Hotel, Warrenpoint - £153, double room with sea view
Sites visited
Newgrange - https://www.newgrange.com/
Battle of the Boyne Museum - https://www.meath.ie/discover/heritage/heritage-sites/battle-of-the-boyne-site
Titanic Belfast - https://www.titanicbelfast.com/
Warrenpoint - https://www.visitwarrenpoint.com/