Northern Ireland

Today was a travel day to Belfast as we start to wind down our European journey with eight nights to go.

Rather than taking a direct route, we decided to check out a few of the many Game of Thrones film locations. While we enjoyed the series, I think we were equally drawn to the unusual features and beauty of the locations.

We passed by Binevagh, a beautiful mountain on the edge of County Derry. We had been in the area the day before, and it was fun to get another look at the mountain. This site was filmed as the mountain where Daenrys is rescued by her dragon and taken to his lair. Visitors can travel to the top of the mountain although we just appreciated it from the base.

We passed by the beautiful Downhill Strand, a beautiful beach that we first saw yesterday franed from above through the window ruins of Downhill Dumesne. Melisandre burned the old gods on Dragonstone here.

One of the sites that we were most interested in seeing was the Dark Hedge. The Dark Hedges is an avenue of large mature beech trees, which were planted around 1775 by James Stuart to frame an avenue to his home, Gracehill House. Originally there were about one hundred and fifty trees and about ninety still stand today. The tunnel image created by the trees is quite eerie and beautiful. I would have loved to have seem then with sunlight effects and in the evening.

In GOT, the Dark Hedges were used as the "Kingsroad", the fictional road that traverses across the land of Westeros, from Kings Landing in the south to “The Wall” in the north.

We learned that artists had created doors from the wood of fallen trees depicting GOT scenes. The doors are distributed around different pubs and other locales. One of the doors was supposed to be at the nearby gold course, but it had instead been moved to a nearby closed hotel, and not open to the public. I hope to see one of the doors as they are quite intricate. I joked that the area industry had failed to "HODOR"; a single utterance of a GOT character who could only say that as we later learned meant "Hold the door".

Our final GOT destination was to Cushendum Caves, where Melisandre the witch gave birth to her "shadow baby" in an area portrayed as the Stormlands. It took us a few minutes to figure out the location of the caves which were located around the corner from two closed hotels. The caves were a little tricky to get down to over an eroded path, but it was worth seeing them. Someone has created a humorous Iron Throne out of a dilapidated armchair with swords protruding from the back. It conglomerate stone and erosion of the formations of the cave were spectacular. It must have been interesting to film here.

We made our way to Belfast, and we were greeted by Kevin who is hosting us in his apartment for the next three nights. We are located about two miles outside of the center of the city. Belfast has about 350,000 people and it serves as the capital of Northern Ireland. It's the birthplace of C S. Lewis author of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" in his "Chronicles of Narnia" and its shipyards built the Titanic. It's also been the site of severe sectarian strife and violence in the early 1920's and also in during "The Troubles". In my early teens, I remember news about the viokence in Belfast, but I didn't really understand it. We are hoping to learn more about the city in our time here.

After a nap, we made our way to C.S. Lewis Square to see a community concert. Enroute, we noticed many murals depicting fierce Protestant sentiment, not unlike the Catholic murals in Derry.

We watched a community performance of a local fife and drum group, the Gertrude Star Flute Band; local choir and guest performers who are famous artists from the area. This performance was sponsored by an East Belfast Community organization.

When we bought tickets for the performance, it was with little background about it. We thought that it would be interesting to see a community show, and we had listened to Spotify tracks of the featured performers, Matt McGinn and Duke Special. Matt reminded us of Pete Seeger as well of a community performance of sea shanties in coastal Maine where he joined the local community singers and dancers. Duke Special has a beautiful voice, and it was fun to hear him sing.

The similarity of the coastal Maine performance and this one was the strong sense of community pride. But here there is also a sense of palpable anger, resentment and worry about losing a sense of identity. There was also an incongruous selection of songs: some held onto the grievances and loss of the past while others proposed peace and kindness. There were also a few that were very sentimental about returning to Belfast. And there were references to the 12th of July that we didn't understand until we looked it up.

The 12th celebrates the victory of the Protestant King William of Orange over the Catholic King James in 1688. The day remains a holiday in Northern Ireland and is alternately known as Orangeman's Day. Over time, the day was often marked by violence, particularly during "The Troubles". In my research, it appears that there are some efforts to draw tourists with parades and family-friendly pageants.

Our take on the evening in this one snapshot is that there is a very strongly held sectarian pride, and that battle remains to hold onto identity. Some still seem to be fighting a war of the 17th century. This is just how we're making sense of it as witnesses. And it's a point of reflection back home about our own schism and comparative narratives.Read more