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Published: April 9th 2007
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Mourne Mountains
The 1-2ac fields lined by the stone walls and the coast in the background. On the 4th Dave and I borrowed the Land Rover and went for a drive to the Mourne Mountains. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer day, the sun was shining and we only had to wear 1 layer instead of 3! The Mournes are Northern Ireland highest mountains and contain 12 mountains in total. Our first stop of the day was Newcastle, which is an hour south of where we’ve been staying and along the coast. We cruised around town for a bit checking out shops and finding information about the Mournes. After that we headed into the Mournes to Silent Valley, which is a dammed and is where Belfast gets its water from. The drive to Silent Valley was really pretty; all the fields were lined with the traditional stone walls that you see throughout Northern Ireland. The difference here was the fields were only an acre to two big! The views got better the higher we climbed, and as far as you could see it were stone walls all the way to the coast. When we arrived at Silent Valley we did a short walk to the dam, and then back through the woods around a lake,
Mourne Wall
A small part of the 22 mile wall that was built by hand. and back to the car. One of the main sights at Silent Valley is the Mourne Wall. The Walls run on both sides of the valley and are of course made from the stones that were lying in the fields. It is 22 miles long, about 3 feet wide and connects the summits of 15 mountains. It took almost 20 years to build, and the men who built had to walk everyday to work, so the further the wall got the longer they had to walk to work. The men were not paid by the hour either; they were paid by the metre they built in a day! Can you image having to walk miles to get to work everyday, to only get paid for how much wall you built!
From Silent Valley we headed north through the Mournes to find an ancient monument. Yes another ancient monument! The monument is a burial site that dates back to 2000BC. The site is called Legananny Dolmen and are 3 stones holding up one big stone. Way back when the whole site would have been covered under soil, but now it is exposed. After visiting this we made our way back
Silent Valley Dam
Standing in front of the dam, with the mtns behind us. to town, after getting slightly lost. Funny cartoon maps are not completely to scale! We stopped in a town called Castlewellan, where walked around to checked out some shops. We happened to stop in one and were buying some things when the women behind the counter asked where we were from. It turned out her husband was a New Zealander and had lived in Palmerston North, the same town Dave went to University in. So we had a chat with them for a while. It was from them we learned the Under 19 World Cup Rugby was playing in Belfast, and the next day New Zealand was playing Wales and Ireland was playing Australia straight after. They even offered to come pick us up and take us to the game if we couldn’t get a ride! It’s a small world! From there we headed back home.
The next day (5th) we borrowed the Land Rover again and did a drive along the Ards Peninsula, which is west of where we’ve been calling home for the time being. The Peninsula is only 19 miles long and the end is a town called Portaferry. Here we stopped and went to an
Legananny Dolmen
The ancient burial site. aquarium, where we could pet the fish and sharks! There is also a ferry that goes around the Narrow Channel to Strangford; the channel is only a mile or so across. The current is so strong though the boat drives along side it, then just lets the current take into the port at the other side. It only cost us £6 to get us and the vehicle across! Once across we drove to Downpatrick, which is a famous town dating back to St. Patrick’s time.
St. Patrick was around in 400 AD, he was originally born in Britain and as a teenager he was kidnapped by Irish warriors and brought back as a slave to Ireland. He lived as a slave for 6 years in the Slemish Mountains before escaping and returning back to Britain, here he trained to be a priest and then became a bishop. It is believed he returned to Ireland in 431AD and converted many of the pagans to Christianity. Downpatrick is where St. Patrick’s body is buried and a large stone with “Patrick” engraved on the top marks this area. The legend goes that when St. Patrick died his body was placed in a
Narrow Channel
Ferry crossing the channel from Portaferry to Strangford. cart and pulled by 2 wild oxen. Wherever the oxen stopped was where his body was to be buried, they walked 2 miles before stopping on the hill beside an old church, which is where he is buried. In the 12th century the Down Cathedral was built beside the grave. We also went to the St. Patrick’s centre when we were in Downpatrick; it had more to do with the religion part of St. Patrick’s journey and became a little too hard core for Dave and I. Another ruin we stopped at that involves Patrick was Inch Abbey, this was a 12th century monastery and it was here that many of the St. Patrick legends were written down in medieval times. It was here that the legend of St. Patrick chasing all the snakes from Ireland out came from.
We headed into Belfast later that night to take in a couple games of rugby. New Zealand was playing Wales and after that game it was Ireland vs. Australia. We missed almost the first half of NZ vs. Wales and by the time we got there it was already 17-0 NZ. There was a still lot of good playing left
and NZ won 37-14. The second game of Ireland vs. Australia had the stands packed and the atmosphere was awesome with everyone singing and cheering. The game was close and Ireland played really well, but in the end they lost 15-10.
On the 6th Johnny and Chris took us for a drive to the contractor that they work at so Dave could look at more tractors. Yeah for me! After that we went to a 350 head dairy farm which is very big for over here. It was quite a nice set-up and was a cross between an NZ barn and a Canadian barn. After that we picked Neil and went to Portrush for a Toy Tractor show. Some people may say model show, but unless you can get in them and start them they're just toys! After 2 ¼ hrs of non-stop toy tractor excitement we got to leave, and go back to the farm.
We haven’t done much for the rest of the weekend, just hanging around. We hope to get to Armagh this week before we head over to Edinburgh on the 12th of April. County Armagh is where the Stothers’ side is originally from.
Down Cathedral
The Cathedral built beside Patricks gravesite.
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anonymous
non-member comment
boys ah say i didnt even know the half of that. there models NOT toys thank you.