Stranraer, Scotland to Islandmagee, Ireland

Our friends Alan and Helen put us in touch with friends of theirs, Stephanie and Matthew, near Stranraer. It was really convenient as it was not too far from the ferry crossing to Northern Ireland. Matthew and Stephanie live on a large farm and are pretty self-sufficient. We ate sausage they had made from their animals. Matthew had a duck and some pheasants hanging outside the back door ready to be prepared for eating.

The property that they lived in used to be the local parish school and it was interesting to read an account from one of the teachers who ran the school. She had several children arrive at the school during the war years and they were billeted by local farming families. Unfortunately we didn't get any photos of our stay with Matthew and Stephanie.

We headed off early the next morning and found our catamaran ferry had been cancelled because of damage it had sustained in a storm the day before. We had to wait several hours before the next ferry crossing and they took a long time to load as they had lots of extra passengers. It looked to us like they would never fit everyone on but they did.

Our tourist information pamphlets showed us a campground not far from Belfast so we decided to cross the city and have a brief look at it but it turned out to be the wrong decision as there were several streets being resealed and car crashes and ambulances blocking up the one way streets. When we finally arrived at the campground it was closed so we continued driving along the coast looking for somewhere to camp.

We found a caravan club site at Islandmagee and were the only people in the camp even though it is mid term holidays for many schools. It was very cold so we were grateful to be able to plug into the electricity and have our fan heater running. The camp was pretty basic and had no showers or hot water and we had to walk a long way to get to the toilets.

We drove around the peninsula and spent some time talking to the local fishermen near the bird nesting colony at Port Muck. We were hoping to be able to see some puffins but they had headed for Rathlin Island further off the coast. If the weather had been better we would have liked to have spent some time on the island but it has been stormy lately.

We continued on around the coast road stopping briefly in Glenarm, the home to the Mac Donnell clan.

We arrived at the Giant's Causeway during a break in the weather. The fee to park in the National Trust car park was 7.50 Euros for our van and a man told us to continue driving to the hotel car park where we could park for free if we had a cup of tea there. The tea only cost 2 Euros. There were still several tourists clambering over the rocks even with the high seas running. Parts of the walkway were closed due to land slides.