At 2:15 p.m. precisely, on May 21, 2009, I crossed into the United Kingdom for the very first time.Just over six minutes later, I left it.This happened when the N53 road we were on became the A37 as it left County Monaghan near the border with County Louth, and slipped across the national border into County Armagh. We remained on the A37, and in Northern Ireland, for the next six and a half minutes until we crossed back into County Monaghan, the Irish Republic, and the A37 went back to being the N53, at 2:21.But I’m several hours ahead of myself.Dave and I made our way that morning down to the Dublin Skylon Hotel on Upper Drumcondra Road. This was where we were to meet Dave’s friend, Larry. Larry was an intriguing figure for me even before I met him. Just from the little I knew about him, he already sounded exceptional. Dave works security, and Larry had worked for him for several years... despite being roughly twice Dave’s age. But Dave had also characterized him to me as a man who had personal business interests all over what sounded like the whole northern half of Ireland. Despite this, he’d been determined for many years to hold down a serious “day” job. It was clear to me that this was a man who trusted little to chance, but did his best to make his own luck. Dave had a high regard for Larry, and that seemed mutual. Just because Larry had reason to travel around the north of Ireland hardly obliged him to drag someone like me around. But he did, because Dave was his good friend, and because they were both proud Irishmen eager to share their pride with someone who’d come from away to learn.Dave and I had a couple of drinks in the lounge at the hotel. It was right around noon when Larry arrived to pick us up in his spacious minivan. Dave and I abandoned our drinks (how un-Irish) and hurried to meet him. Larry was a tall, avuncular man of retirement age (later on he gave his age as 70), who greeted us warmly and got us on the road north.
Dave had been concerned that, given the difference in accents, I might not be able to understand Larry, but I understood him just fine. He was a man who’d grown up in the borderlands, and he had an accent that was different from Dave’s... by no means the lilt of the south. It was much more the sort of brassy tones one hears emanating from Belfast and beyond. I understood him to be a native of either Monaghan or Louth... Louth is technically in Leinster, not Ulster, but as close to the border as Larry and his family seemed to call home, it really made no difference. Anyway, I think Larry had a harder time understanding me. It’s possible my own accent made me sound a little mush-mouthed to him. :)Larry knew that my own family was from the North, from the environs of Enniskillen, specifically, and he was determined to get me there, showing me quite a bit of the countryside along the way. It was the sort of tour that you simply couldn’t have bought. It was guided not by a busman reading a book, but by a man who’d spent decades moving along the lanes and backroads, in and out of the towns and counties in the course of living a life.In Louth, we left the northbound M1 and stopped off in a place called Dromena (at least, that’s what it says on the map). It was here that we dropped in, briefly, on Larry’s daughter and son-in-law and their kids. They had a large, impressive home in the countryside, which they were currently renovating. Adjacent to it was what Larry deemed an “eco-friendly” home. It was prefabricated, and I gathered it was now the principal residence for himself and his wife, as well as representative of a new, blossoming business concern for him. It was on a single level, roomy and nicely-appointed inside, and Larry told us a little about the significance of some of the furnishings. I have to admit, the one that impressed me the most was the rifle hung over the mantle. Larry told us that it had belonged to his grandfather, a member of the original IRA, and had been carried by him during the Anglo-Irish War (a.k.a. the War of Independence) in the early 1920s, which had led to both independence for the 26 counties and, sadly, the partition of the country that persists to this day. I felt privileged to be allowed to photograph it. On a personal note, without such men, I would not be a citizen of Ireland and Europe today, nor would the tens of thousands like me around the world (not to mention the millions who actually live in Ireland!).
When we got back on the road, we crossed the highway and made our way to a place that Larry either has, or had, an interest in: Darver Lodge. We stopped in front of it and had a quick look. I gathered it was being renovated with a big future in mind. Larry spoke casually of his various projects, without pretension. It was becoming clear to me that he was one of these people who simply has the knack for, more often than not, spinning straw into gold, and then moving on to the next haystack. It must make for an interesting life.
We left Darver Lodge and headed back out onto the road to resume our journey...
Literally just around the corner is the Readypenny Inn, which Larry also once had an interest in. I got the feeling it had proven to be a bit of a money pit for him over all, and he was glad to sell off his interest to someone else. Still, he spoke of it with warmth.
We resumed our trip northbound on the M1 and then cut west at Dundalk. It was ten minutes after that that we crossed, for the first of a dozen times, the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
Below is either the first photo I ever took in Northern Ireland, or is just a few yards short of the border: where the N53 becomes, temporarily, the A37.
And the beat goes on... This is one of the first sights that greeted us in south Armagh.
...But that was really the only obvious sign of the Troubles I saw. The rest of Northern Ireland was as lovely and placid as the South...
...and then, not quite 45 minutes after leaving Northern Ireland, we were in Monaghan Town...
It was just before 3 when we arrived at Monaghan Town, where Larry very kindly treated us at a smart little sandwich shop in the middle of town. I stand to be corrected here, but I believe the name of the place was Corr’s Corner Restaurant. Monaghan Town is gorgeous; it’s everything someone would come from abroad to see in Ireland (at least, outside the urban attractions of Dublin itself). We gazed out into the street as we chatted and enjoyed the ambiance of the place, the placidity of the moment, and each other’s company before hitting the road again to make our first serious foray into Northern Ireland, and my ancestral home.
P.S. Here's Dave, sitting opposite me at Corr's, while we wait for Larry to arrive from parking the van. :)
