Ulster Trek: The Voyage "Home", part II — Fermanagh

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes, we had had lunch in Monaghan and were heading west into Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. Well, we were taking the truly scenic route. When we left Monaghan, we headed west till we got to Clones (which is pronounced to rhyme with “slowness”), and then headed north. We crossed the border into Northern Ireland, but we didn’t head straight for Enniskillen. We headed back east for a bit to take in the sights, and looped back down to retrace our route along the N54 to Clones.


Along the way, we passed through a beautiful little town called Rosslea.

We passed back into Monaghan and headed back towards Clones.


It was during our second visit to Clones that Larry, who was off the main routes he was used to, decided to ask directions of some folks. The first person we asked simply smiled, shook his head, and shrugged. It was obvious that he didn't speak English. Seemed to me he was likely an immigrant from Eastern Europe, the new members of the European Union making their way in a new country. Immediately after that, we managed to catch the attention of a couple of guys in a truck hauling a trailer of loam, half of which they seemed to be slowly leaving behind them like brown bread crumbs for Hansel and Gretel. These guys, too, had heavy Slavic accents, but they managed in English, and told us, more or less, to simply carry on in the direction they'd just come from and we would find our way.

As we drove away, Dave leaned forward and put us all in stitches remarking, "What did he say? 'Follow my trail of shit'?" Which was all the funnier because that, for the next couple of miles, was essentially what we did.

We came to another crossroad in a town right near the border, and asked an Irishwoman for directions. We doubled back down a hill we'd come up, and crossed back over into County Fermanagh, this time bound for Enniskillen.

Below is where we crossed over into Enniskillen itself. A word of explanation... Now, if you watch the video below, after Larry announces that, I say "wow" in such a seemingly lackluster way, I'm embarrassed. But it wasn't like that! I said it in a manner I meant to convey astonishment at the realization: the head-shaking, "I can't believe it" way adults do when they finally realize a long-term goal, but not in the "holy cow gee whiz gosh!" way kids do. I only wish it had sounded like that. :)

But no, I was looking around, trying to imagine the place nearly a century ago... the place where my grandmother had been born, the streets she would have walked down, the shops she would have visited with her mother. All around me was a place I'd come from, the first ancestral place I had ever been to...

You'll also hear Larry say something about "that's where the police are trained", by which I presume he means the PSNI, the Police Service of Northern Ireland... until recently the infamous Royal Ulster Constabulary, or RUC.

Don't ask me what the wiggly lines on the road are all about... "you must be this drunk to drive in Ireland"; I dunno. :) Larry points out a liquor store named Magee... McGee was my great-grandmother's maiden name; a real Ulster name.

We didn't really stick around in town. Larry and Dave dropped me off to run down and photograph Lough Erne and the swans... it was really my only solitary moment in Northern Ireland. I dashed back up to meet them and we continued on our way. I had anticipated doing more there, and even Dave and I staying in town while Larry went on to Donegal and picked us up on his way back, but we moved on up the lake and west. I heard later from Dave that Larry expressed the opinion while I was down at the lake that Enniskillen was "a black town" -- which I take to mean, not really safe for people like us. Not sure why, but I'm hardly likely to argue with a man like Larry when he says something like that.


We stopped at a couple of places along Lower Lough Erne to take a few shots of the beautiful views.


This view really charmed me... a farmer and his goat. I don't remember actually ever seeing anything quite like this before. Just a tiny little moment from the 19th century still real in the 21st.

And so we left Fermanagh, and headed west towards Donegal, and back into the Republic.

Spuds from the sod

Dave has sent me a photo of a potato plant growing in his garden. Something lovely from Ireland. :) He said to me:

Have you ever seen the movie "the last samurai", the samurai leader is looking at a cherry tree contemplating. no matter how long you search for the perfect blossom you can never find it as "in the end" they are all perfect.

well, thats what my pic does for me...

I have been growing potatoes for 3 years, and each year it amazes me that such a humble vegetable should have such a strikingly beautiful flower.

My camera does the flower no justice as It doesnt have a proper zoom facility.

The petals are purple, and the heart of the flower is the most vivid orange imaginable. Segmented like a peeled orange.

Ulster Trek: The Voyage "Home", part I — Louth-Monaghan

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...

I remember remarking, as we crossed back into County Monaghan, that I thought the places we’d passed through in County Armagh didn’t seem as well-heeled as the places I’d seen so far in the Republic, but Larry reminded me I hadn’t seen that much of Northern Ireland yet.

A couple of views along the way...


...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. :)