Northern Eire’s surroundings is just too awe-inspiring to be contained by any single fantasy or deity – there’s house and time for all of them – particularly when travelling by bike

Having grown up in southernmost England within the Eighties and Nineties, my consciousness of Northern Eire began and ended with grim information studies about bombs and bloodshed. Concerning the precise place, its historical past, tradition and geography, I knew virtually nothing. Loads of associates and family members went on vacation to Scotland or Wales, however nobody crossed the Irish Sea. This unconscious blockade remained in place till my early-30s after I met my accomplice, Anton, whose roots lay in rural North Antrim. The training curve was steep, however a key turning level got here when, sitting exterior a restaurant in Derry because the streets stuffed with besuited marching males thumping bellymounted drums, Anton thrust into my arms a duplicate of A Place Aside by the late, nice journey author Dervla Murphy.

An account of many weeks spent biking round Northern Eire, A Place Aside is a journey e-book like no different. Most extraordinary is the time of its setting: Murphy cycled to Northern Eire from her residence within the south on the top of the Troubles, summer season 1976, and didn’t flinch at sparking up conversations with strangers in a few of the diciest areas. These interactions she discovered addictive, the place beguiling. By the top of her travels, she was urging her associates to go to the north, assuring them that they’d “discover the folks as welcoming [as in the south], the surroundings nearly as good, the roads higher, and the climate no worse.” To my associates from southern England, I’d go additional: Northern Eire beats our area on all these factors – besides maybe the climate. And now I’m again right here searching for to show my case.

Our journey begins beneath the ramparts of Carrickfergus citadel, constructed by the Anglo-Norman knight John de Courcy in 1177, on the northern shore of Belfast Lough. It was right here that Protestant King William III first set foot in Eire in 1690 to complete the job having deposed Catholic King James II – a keystone occasion for northern loyalists. Earlier than we’ve even turned a pedal, a jovial middle-aged man on a folding e-bike stops for a chat concerning the adventures he and his mates have loved recently. It’s the form of freewheeling, unrushed encounter you hardly ever have in southern England. However we have to be getting on, for the sky is starting to bruise.

All of the presidents’ glen

Positive sufficient, inside a couple of minutes it’s spitting with rain and we briefly take shelter contained in the cottage the place the dad and mom of the seventh US president Andrew Jackson had lived earlier than emigrating to the Carolinas in 1765. The cottage is now a museum that maybe not surprisingly emphasises Jackson’s political nous whereas downplaying his penchant for ethnic cleaning. You must marvel if bullishness is within the blood round right here while you study that Jackson was the primary of a minimum of 15 US presidents with Scots-Irish heritage – from Jackson proper via to Barack Obama. Stepping again exterior, the drizzle has set in, washing out the views, so we resolve to get nearer to the surroundings with a cliffside clamber.

The Gobbins is a cliff-face alongside the jap coast of the Islandmagee peninsula about 10 miles north of Carrickfergus. It’s raining steadily by the point we arrive, so we dive into the customer centre for a espresso and traybake (this area’s candy treats are unapologetically indulgent). Earlier than we twig why, we’re being kitted out in sturdy boots and laborious hats, earlier than being launched to our tour information Jim and loaded right into a minibus. The trek begins a brief drive away, on a craggy path that was chiselled from the cliff-face on the flip of the twentieth century. Jim is an outstanding information who in brief, animated bursts explains how the white-knuckle path, with its two miles of steps, tunnels and bridges, was the labour of affection of railway engineer Berkeley Deane Smart. As we scramble alongside this most inconceivable vacationer path – as bonkers as it’s lovely – I can’t assist questioning at Smart’s fervent quest to tame nature and open to guests a spot in any other case solely accessible to gulls, kittiwakes and puffins.

This have to be the place

Again within the minibus, I get chatting to the driving force, Paula, who tells me she has lived right here for 40 years. “I’m from the Isle of Wight initially however I got here right here on my bike in 1984. I assumed it was higher right here,” she says matter-of-factly, “so I stayed.” Visiting right here as a lone feminine bike owner in these troubled occasions – the identical yr because the Brighton bombing – and falling in love with the place appears uncannily just like Dervla Murphy’s expertise. Too many questions flood my thoughts, so I mumble one thing obscure about how she should have seen quite a lot of modifications right here. She grins at me with a sympathetic expression that claims: go searching you, what’s to not love?

We’re getting used to the rain by now and it’s not chilly so we do a loop of the peninsula earlier than selecting up the Antrim coast street. Just like the Gobbins path on an enormous scale, the coast street is a feat of engineering that appears to defy logic. Fairly than connecting the cities of villages of the glens with inland roads, civil engineer William Bald proposed to carve out a route alongside the bottom of the cliffs for practically 40 miles, from Larne to Ballycastle. Between 1832 and 1842, he did simply that by blasting away tens of hundreds of cubic metres of rock, clearing a spectacular route alongside the shoreline. Simply north of Larne, we pedal previous a roadside memorial paying homage to the “males of the Glynnes” who chipped away till the coast was cleared. Because the street twists and turns, the hue of the rock shifts from mild limestone to pink sandstone to black basalt – the latter forming a surprising pure 5km-to-go gantry as we move beneath The Black Arch for our first-day finale to the Ballygally resort.

Hammered by Torr head