Ireland and the Argory

“You're brilliant!”
- My mom's comment after I smoothly maneuvered to the third exit of a three-lane roundabout.

We enjoyed a delicious breakfast at our B&B while visiting with a couple of other guests from Calgary, Alberta. It seems so strange to travel halfway around the world and still run into Canadians at every turn. Breakfast included potato bread (quite dense and thin – more like a pancake than bread) and soda bread (flour, buttermilk, and baking soda fried in a pan). Both are new foods for us and we enjoyed them, especially the soda bread.

Our first stop was The Argory, a stately home owned by the National Trust. The place has never been updated with electricity beyond a few outlets for the security system and cleaning so the home is only open in the summer as it is only lit by sunlight. National Trust sites sadly don't allow indoor photography so I can't share images of the interior, but it was a beautiful home, largely retaining the same arrangement as when the family lived there. The office used by the last owner remains exactly as it was when he died, with staff occasionally carefully cleaning items on his desk and replacing them in the same position as he left them.

This dog followed us on a walk around the grounds - we were told he belongs to a neighbour but likes to hang out with guests on the estate.

The Argory.

I like Ireland.

Most of the people in my family enjoy exploring old graveyards - I spotted this one along the side of a country road so we stopped to take a quick walk and check out the gravestones. I could hear waves crashing on the beach on the other side of the hill.

A beautiful old graveyard.

We did plenty of driving today as we wanted to reach the northernmost tip of Ireland, partly because we heard that area is beautiful and partly just so we could say we reached the northernmost tip of Ireland. When I was a kid my family was on a road trip in British Columbia and my dad went out of his way to drive us across the border on the southernmost tip of the Alaska pan-handle just so we could say we'd been to Alaska. We like adding quirky things to our been-there, done-that list.

The most northern tip of Ireland.
Why did we go there? Because it's there.

I drove on some fun roads.

Now we can say we've been to the North Pole.

As we drove down a narrow, steep, winding country road (I like to throw random way-points on the GPS route to give us a better chance of stumbling on interesting scenery away from the main routes) we spotted this stone cross and decided to find a place to turn around so we could check it out. You never know what you'll find when you do that, but it's my favourite thing to do while on a road trip.


Next to the cross was a low, stone wall with a sign mounted on it:

"An early ecclesiastical site founded by St. Patrick and which survived to the 12th century. There is a tall, simple wheeled cross; the remains of two church buildings; one to the north west being that of a chapel built in 1622 and destroyed in 1688. There is a small gabled structure with a stone roof known as the Mortuary or Skull House and said to be a tomb-shrine associated with St. Finnian, Abbot of the Monastery. Also located within the modern graveyard wall is a basing-stone, a cross-inscribed stone (both near the Skull House), a wheeled-cross slab and a small stone cross (near the South Church)."

Like I said, you never know what you'll find when a random site catches your eye.

Stairs over the rock wall.

View from the top of the wall - the ocean, a small town, and in the foreground are bushes covering the old building remains and gravestones. I could see old paths worn between the bushes so I left mom and dad on the wall and did a bit of exploring.

Climbed onto a wall and discovered a few cows staring at me from a nearby field. For some reason I find it really amusing when cows stare at me like that.

A gravestone from 1732.

A close-up just for my font-addict brother, David.

Tonight we're staying at a guest house in Coleraine on the north coast. As I drove into the town I saw a police officer standing in the middle of the road with more officers and stopped cars behind him. He motioned for me to stop and he wrote down my license plate number as he approached the vehicle. He asked me to pull ahead and speak with the detective. I was then asked if I had been in the area the night before between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. I said we hadn't and he let us proceed. The guest house was about two or three blocks away (between the detective and our accommodation a drunk guy stumbled into the road in front of me but his friend grabbed him and held him back... welcome to Ireland). Later this evening mom and dad turned on the news and were shocked to discover that a brutal murder the previous night only a few blocks away was why we had been questioned by police. Mom had been nervous about our safety in Northern Ireland due to “the troubles” and I had been telling her that we were perfectly safe as we wouldn't be going to any rough areas of Belfast. Watching the news tonight certainly didn't help. The religious affiliations of the people connected with the murder (Protestant or Catholic) were also mentioned in the news broadcast – not something you'd expect to hear, but not surprising in Northern Ireland.

Our guest house is large and beautiful but the room rates were quite low - a perk of travel in Northern Ireland compared to travelling in a more popular place like the Lake District in England. So nice to be spoiled! We had separate suites and each had a kitchen, sitting room, bathroom, and separate bedroom for only £25 per person.

My canopy bed made me feel like a bit of a diva.