A Day in Northern Ireland

An early morning pickup on a small-group tour bus brought us a couple of hours north of Dublin to Belfast. Along the way, our driver gave us a condensed history of Ireland, from the Neolithic people, to the Celts, to the English rule, to Irish independence in 1921 and into the period of the “Troubles.”

This conflict started in the late 1960s as a peaceful civil rights movement by Irish Catholics who wanted fair treatment and representation in the English-dominated system of government. But tensions between Republicans (mainly Catholics), who wanted a united Ireland, and Loyalists or Unionists (mainly Protestants), who wanted to remain part of the UK escalated into nearly 30 years of violence from paramilitary groups on both sides, including the IRA.

The highlight of the Belfast visit was to take a Black Taxi tour with a local driver who has experienced the political strife firsthand. Although the bombings and the worst of the violence has ended, many areas of the city are still segregated into Catholic and Protestant quarters. Our driver took us to both sections, where there are murals representing the views of each side, but these days, many are about cooperation and reconciliation. Still, we heard that a fair amount of mistrust and some violence still exists.

To curb vandalism and personal attacks, several walls throughout Belfast separate the citizens by religion in the areas of greatest conflict. Every evening in the city, gates along the walls are shut by 6 or 7pm. Sadly, the walls have only increased in number and height since the formal peace agreement in 1998. And residents of Belfast are not clamoring for their removal – rather, they see them as a safety device. A sobering visit.

On a more uplifting note, our day tour continued its travels north, on a mostly sunny day! Scenic green pastureland with windmills in the distance and sheep and cows in the foreground eventually led us to the north coast where we could look across the Atlantic Ocean to Scotland. Our final destination was to the “Giant’s Causeway”—a section along the coast where ancient lava has cooled into hexagonal blocks or basalt columns. Very popular place, but pretty cool to step up and down among the worn columns.Read more