A break from our regularly-scheduled programming

Despite the drought here, our crazy wildflower bed is managing to survive quite beautifully. We've got a fabulous mix of zinnias, coreopsis, cornflowers, marigolds, daisies, etc. Thankfully all those plants are drought-resistant.

The lilies are also flourishing. We have stargazers and oriental lilies; the daylilies have already come and gone. The oriental lilies in particular fill the air with their scent right now so that the whole front yard smells like lily.

U.K. Trip, Day 5

Shaftesbury Square RPC

~

We walked down to Shaftesbury Square RPC for their morning worship at half eleven. Grey day but less bitingly cold. We were welcomed in the porch and entered the sanctuary and found seats. It was good to see Peter, Debbie, and the McKays again, as well as Rosemary and Rachel. After the service, Philip invited us up to the hall for lunch. It was also encouraging to see Heather again. About eight of us sat down to eat together--good fellowship.

The afternoon passed quietly in our room. The window looks out over the roof of another church, and past that, the yellow H&W cranes seem very close, looming over the crowded, tall, narrow houses. 

Naomi picked us up at six, and we went with her to Dromore RPC for evening worship. (I could recognize her car coming from around the corner!) After worship, Naomi and I served coffee/tea in the small fellowship hall at the back of the building. Again, it was good to meet some of the people in the church. Of course, Phil, but also some new acquaintances. When Naomi took us back to our hotel, we had to say good-bye for the last time, which was rough. She'll be in the States by the time we get back from Hadrian's Wall.

U.K. Trip, Day 4

The Mournes from Silent Valley

~

After breakfast this morning, Scott and I stood on the pavement outside our hotel, waiting for Naomi to collect us. As we stood there, we heard drums and fifes away up the street toward Queen's, and suddenly down the road marched a whole parade: two bands, lots of guys carrying banners. Everyone else on the street paused to watch. When Naomi arrived, she was less than impressed, and as we drove out of the city, she made known her thoughts on Northern Ireland's political situation. 

We stopped at Sainsbury's for picnic supplies, and then struck southward. The car's suspension squeaked, grumbled, and whiffled over the A24. On either side, green cow pastures and yellow fields of rape. County Down, an "egg basket," bubbles with odd, abrupt wee hills jammed in next to each other, as though the land were a towel stretched over a boiling pot. Low, grey cottages with slate roofs flitted past, interrupted at times by big, tan, new houses with sprawling cattle sheds. We passed a gigantic 19th-century estate house in ruins and for sale, with a ring of sycamores in front (the remains of a rath). Scott was enchanted.

And then the Mournes appeared, huge, grey masses on the horizon, their heads hidden in cloud. We stopped in Dundrum to see Dundrum Castle, which perches on a hillside up a back lane. The castle is a good old motte-and-bailey, with a slightly newer (15th-century?) ruined house beside it. Massive stone walls, of course. The keep is a huge drum open to the sky. We climbed the spiral staircase, treading warily on the worn stones, and admiring Victorian graffiti scrawled on the walls. From the top, we had a magnificent view of the cluttered roofs of the village, the bay, white-walled Newcastle, and Slieve Donard, immense and blue on the horizon. Directly below us, the curator was throwing a ball for his yellow lab, Lady. In the stones of the castle, tiny red flowers bloomed. 

When we went back down, the curator, a dingy, friendly chap, greeted us and showed off his collection of period weapons, which included a basket-hilt rapier, a broadsword, a fencing foil, a four-foot-long dart, and a slingshot. Lady wagged around our feet.

We drove down to 12 Arches Bridge, where we walked through the dunes to the beach. Smooth periwinkle pebbles, creamy sand, the flat Irish Sea, and a bone-numbing wind, with the vast mountains still on the near horizon. We ate lunch at a picnic table near the road. 

The afternoon took us round the sea-side of Donard, through tiny fields walled with dry stone, endless dry stone, in dizzying, crazy patterns. We paused in Kilkeel to see the fishing harbour, where trawlers rocked at anchor and gulls circled overhead. 

Then up to Silent Valley Forest Park. The car tipped and roared up and down and round frenetic narrow country roads. We passed small, shaggy sheep and hulking cattle. Crows dropped from the heights above on the constant cold wind. All the houses seemed the same.

Inside the forest park, the woods were very cool, quiet, and sane after all the tiny barren fields. We parked the car and walked up to the reservoir, past the water-filled quarry. Above the woods that grow along the creek below the reservoir, we found ourselves in the peacefulness of the open mountainside, wind whistling through the whin. Great peaks marching away to the north. Magically, the sun came out, and the slopes burned tawny and copper, and deep blue above, where clouds still lingered. The reservoir lay still and blue before us in the valley.

We followed the trail then back down into the forest--deep pine woods, bluebells, the clear creek, golden sunshine striking through secret aisles of trees. Bees buzzed past.

Back in the car, we drove through the pass by Slieve Binnian. Enormous, barren slopes, dun and copper and grey, unabated, running to the sky, blank, empty. Then down, gradually, into the green hilly pastures on the other side (we made a loop, basically). I looked back in brilliant sunshine, over a neat green hawthorn hedge, across an emerald-green field, over the brown roof of a house, up a green slope, a valley side, up again over the tawny, barren slopes, up further to the mountains, hooded with blue shadow once more.

Thanks to Scott's sense of direction, we managed not to get lost, despite Naomi's and my best efforts to the contrary, and made our way to Castlewellan. We walked far enough to see the castle, posh grey bulk against a hillside of evergreens, everything very well cared for. On a whim, we decided to poke around in Annesley Gardens nearby, and that turned out to be the best part of the day so far. 

Scott loved them for their benign neglect, their genteel decay--like the Palm House, only more so. They're a walled garden on Castlewellan's grounds. All the plants are very old, well-established, huge. Massive rhododendron trees, bushy, in full, exotic bloom. Also, towering groves of cypress, dark, reddish trunks threading a nighttime gloom. A writhen Japanese maple, moss-grown, maroon-leafed. To Scott's awe, there were a pair of magnificent sequoias.

We discovered a couple of fountains, one derelict and still, one running but hung with algae and surrounded by overgrown shrubs. We found bits of iron gate. We found a long, low greenhouse, its windows smashed in, plants run rampant inside, doors boarded over. We walked down long aisles of dark or gold-leafed evergreens and stared up through star and saucer magnolias grown huge, spidery, sprawling into decay. We breathed the smell of lilac bushes, which filled the air. On one side, the garden was bordered by a long, tall line of silver-leafed eucalyptus trees. And suddenly, a tiny cultivated square with neat geometric beds of snapdragons and begonias around an urn.

Overall, the sense of stumbling through a glorious, queenly, beloved place now forgotten, turned wild and secretive and shadowy in decay. All the plants were too large, too choked and tumbled, grown beyond proportion. 

Naomi drove us back through Hillsboro, past Lisburn, and so into Belfast. She left us at our hotel. Scott and I walked down to Maggi May's for tea. The evening had stayed clear and relatively mild. Scott pronounced their fish and chips the best he'd ever had.

U.K. Trip, Day 3

Belfast from Cave Hill

~

As one would expect after jet lag, we slept late today. Our first stop: Belfast's Botanical Gardens. My favorite place here, quite possibly. We walked in past the wee garden-keeper's house on the side closest to Queen's and were suddenly enveloped in the garden's smells--cool, damp earth, rhododendrons. Ahead of us opened smooth green lawns, the last tulips (silky black), chestnut trees in white and pink bloom. 

We spent quite awhile in the Tropical Ravine, awed by the enormous cycads, banana trees, ferns, and palms. The long brick building has maintained its general air of decay, age, abandonment. Ficus sprouts from the bricks. The girders under their white paint have begun to rust, and tree limbs have started to shoot through the glass panels, which seem almost oppressively low above the enormous jungle canopy. Tiny jewel-colored flowers hung in the darkness under broad leaves, and koi flickered in deep pools. Moss wrapped crumbling bricks, the girders, the fogged glass.

Outside again, we walked round the rose gardens, not yet in bloom, and up through the dell, where rhododendrons (orange, magenta, purple) and conifers grow. A fine rain began to fall again. Then we crossed beside the green to the Palm House, in all its stateliness. Our visit, however, happened to coincide with that of a tour group's, so we dodged into one of the heated side wings to avoid everyone, and were rewarded with ten minutes' contemplation of a fiery display of snapdragons.

Out through the main gates, then, and on to our next adventure: Belfast Castle and Cave Hill. On our way down to city centre to catch the bus, we stopped for lunch at Weatherly House, near the RP church. My first taste of solid Irish stew in awhile. At a table near ours, a bunch of lads (not Northern Irish, by their accents) were drinking and roaring with laughter, which prompted a long discussion between the two of us about decays in morals.

The bus left us at the bottom of the hill, so we walked up through neighborhoods to the Castle park's entrance. We followed an avenue through deeply forested grounds. Huge beech, tulip, and fir trees. The sun nearly came out as we arrived at the Castle and looked down on its lovely small garden, laid out with geometric flowerbeds around a central fountain. Cats were mosaiced or sculptured among beds of tulips, poppies, and sage.

We hiked Cave Hill after a brief investigation of the Castle (which is hardly more than a reception venue). The long trail flings itself over the east face of the hill, winding gradually up through dense trees. Bluebells grew on the darkly shaded ground. The trail emerged suddenly on a promontory overlooking the city and the bay. Up and up again, through whin, all in yellow bloom. Hooded crows and magpies dove from the cliffs looming overhead. We clambered up to the cave and then on, around the slope's shoulder, to approach the cliffs from the back.

The path took us across the open hillside and at last to McArt's Fort, right at the head of the highest cliff. We could see to Carrickfergus Castle, across the bay where the ferry was plowing toward Scotland, over to Crawfordsburn, across the cranes and tower blocks of the city, to the distant shadowy Mournes. Cold wind scoured the ridge, and the rain had returned. Behind us, the back of the cliff broadened out into what can only be described as a moor, weird as that seems in the middle of this densely-populated area--a long, wide swathe of hilltop, all windswept grass.

We followed the trail down as it wound under this ridge. Suddenly, we came upon horses on either side of the path: a big muscled stallion in one enclosure just up the hillside, all magnificent dark flanks and wind-tumbled mane, and a herd of bays and chestnuts just down the slope, grazing. They eyed us inquisitively, and we paused to watch them.

And so down. The trail took a long, slow, straight descent under the ridge above. Where it crossed a creek with a pair of small waterfalls, it doubled back toward the Castle, putting the Black Mountain (at the opposite end of the high ridge from Cave Hill) behind us. High hawthorn hedges on either side. A field with three cows, thick with iris spears. Then down into the deep woods again. Birds sang everywhere, pealing from every branch. The huge, winding, twisted limbs of the trees were vivid with moss.

Down, and out into the cultivated park, and then we found ourselves out on the street again. On our way back to the bus stop, we paused to see the Resurrection Chapel, built by one of the Castle's former inhabitants for his dead son. A lovely Gothic gem, it sits abandoned in a patch of brambles in the middle of the housing estate. No glass in the traceried windows, and graffiti on the belltower.

We took the bus to Castlecourt and found ourselves swept along in 6 p.m. crowds--shoppers going home, kids going out, etc. The mess and grime and grind of the city, so different from the stillnesses above on that ridge. We stepped into a pound shop and bought an umbrella, but when we walked outside again, the rain had stopped (and that was the last we'd see of rain until Edinburgh, almost a week-and-a-half later!).

After tea, we happened to be walking down Botanic and ran into Sarah and Sheep, and stopped to chat with them. Good to see them again! We went to Starbucks to contact Naomi and make plans for tomorrow.

U.K. Trip, Day 2

Up at the top of Victoria Square shopping mall, we saw a falconer using a hawk to scare away the pigeons.

~

We descended through layers of cloud toward Belfast International Airport this morning at about nine o'clock. For the fun of it, Scott was keeping up a running commentary in French as we landed. Customs in Belfast never ceases to amaze me: the personnel are always friendly, relaxed, and professional. Since we hadn't checked any luggage, we walked right through the airport--and there was Naomi, waiting for us just outside! A joyful reunion. 

She drove us to Hotel Ibis, right by Queens. All the familiar sights and smells of the motorway, right down to the potato factory on the outskirts of the city (which gives the air a distinctive odor), and the abandoned door factory next door. We passed through the grim estates and terraced houses behind city centre, around the corner guarded by City Hospital, and suddenly found ourselves whizzing under the green archway made by the trees that give Elmwood Avenue its name. Then the maze of one-way streets around Queens, and the fun of trying to find a parking spot.

The three of us ate lunch at The Other Place, a cafe in Botanic, Ulster fries all round (the first of many for Scott and me). All afternoon we walked the city: Shaftesbury Square and the venerable red brick Reformed Presbyterian Church building, City Hall with its green copper dome, the Albert Clock, the Bigfish by the black Lagan, Belfast Cathedral (St. Anne's), Victoria Square, the long drag up past Castlecourt Mall, Great Victoria Street, the Opera House, the Europa, the Lanyon Building, and the new Queens Library. A fine drizzle descended on our heads every step of the way, and I shivered in the unfamiliar cold. Inside St. Anne's, an organist was practicing; on the crowded footpath outside the mall, someone was playing an accordion. The new library was packed with students revising for the spring term exams; I've never seen a library so full. It was so full as to be hot and uncomfortable, claustrophobic, even after the bustling streets. We stepped into the C.S. Lewis room but didn't stay long.

I remembered as we walked how much I love this city: its bricolage of mid-19th century neo-Gothic, mid-20th century (Soviet-style!) modern, 21st century sleek glass and steel and pine; its weathered slate or green copper roofs; the occasional glittering mosaic or intricate limestone cornice. It's a dirty city, of course; people smoke constantly, and many of the grand, palatial office buildings are vacant, a product of the economic collapse. Still, it has a crazy, dingy, familiar beauty all its own, under the steady rain.

To send our families an e-mail saying that we'd arrived, we went with Naomi to the maths building to borrow her computer. Since she needed to work, we said good-bye, and Scott and I stepped back out into the rain--a proper rain now. We walked down to a mini Tesco to provision ourselves for the weekend, and then we returned to our room. Despite all advice to the contrary, we napped for awhile, jet lag getting the better of us.

After awhile, we perused our guidebooks, listing off possible adventures for the weekend. We ate PB&J for dinner and then ventured out to find a Starbucks. I guided us down past Queens. The rain had stopped and the evening was chilly but pearly--grey and rose skies, blue peeping through. We passed Renwick and stopped to admire All Souls across the way. Ivy looped velvety gold ruffles over the grey stone. 

We spent awhile catching up on the internet in Starbucks. As we walked back, Scott commented on how everyone on the streets seemed to have cheered up once the rain stopped. No surprise there. The evening really was lovely, a gentle gilding of sky and buildings. 

Now Playing: Vivaldi, "Four Seasons."

U.K. Trip, Day 1

 Indianapolis Airport

~

Frantic preparation for our grand adventures consumed most of today. Our flight from Indianapolis to Newark didn't leave until about half five in the evening, so we had all day to deposit checks, mow the lawn, wash sheets, eat leftovers, and stuff our backpacks with everything we'd need for the next three weeks. Most of the around-the-house tasks were Scott's--he had to show Eric where everything was; he had to print all our reservation confirmations; he had to mow and spray deer repellant on the rosebushes.

At 2 p.m., Mary showed up to take us to the airport, and Eric returned with his first load of belongings. The four of us ate an impromptu feast on leftover wedding cake and lasagna before Mary took us up to Indianapolis. The afternoon was warm, May in full flush, variegating the woods and fields with the lush greens of late spring.

At the airport we said good-bye to Mary and were off. I've decided that I much prefer traveling with someone else--no tear-jerking farewells, no panic at the check-in desk. We had no hitches as we went through security, waited for, and then boarded our flight. As we coasted down over New York City, the setting sun flashed apricot and peach from the skyscrapers, flashed green from roofs and the Statue of Liberty, outlined all these against the grey bay.

We sat at the gate for the flight from Newark to Belfast for awhile. Around us the familiar Northern Irish accents had already begun to crop up, and for once I wasn't stressed, afraid, or melancholy. Our cinched backpacks rested against our knees until boarding began, and then the six-hour flight. At one point, lightning flickered below us, intersecting across the night sky, sketching vast fields of cloud to the south. I hardly slept, but Scott did.

Now Playing: Beethoven piano concerti.

This blog has been woefully silent for the last month or so. A lot has happened since then: a wedding and the attendant festivities, a three-week holiday to the U.K., and VBS. Since VBS ended last Friday, Scott and I have moved on to the next big project, painting the stairwell and hallway in our house. With Mary's help, we finally finished today.

In order to finish the stairwell, Scott taped a paintbrush to the end of a pole. With this contraption he reached all the high parts perfectly, while Mary and I painted the doors and the trim.

Tomorrow, I'll start posting day-by-day with a photo and an entry for each day of the trip Scott and I took after we got married.