On Saturday morning we were transfered back to Dublin Airport and I had a flight ticket for Frankfurt. I have to admit that with my knee I was more than happy to get home and had already arranged someone to pick me up and get me straight to the hospital.

The flight itself seemed to take hours (so at least told me the pain in my knee…because sitting in a tiny airplane and not beeing able to bow the knee is pure terror). When we finally reached Frankfurt we needed an whole hour to get through the passcontrol (they had only one counter open…perfect) and then luckily my best friend was already waiting to get me to the hospital. There the big surprise…I was told they could not sew the wound anymore (too late) and they made x-ray-images from my knee to be sure nothing was broken. Finally it took me six weeks to get that one totally healed and I received a lasting memory of that wonderfull Northern Ireland trip, a 5 centimeter scar on my right knee.

Friday was our last hiking day and we had to pack our luggage again as we were going to spend that last night in Ballymena and not in Derry.

The luggage was stored in the bus which brought us to the Gortin Glen Forest Park. In this park we were going to do two loop tracks. I must admit that I would have prefered another mountain to another forest park as the parks in Northern Ireland are all very likewise and have wood, waterfalls and a little hill in it and we already had two of these, but that part of the tour was only planned for the first half of the day so this was okay.

The bus picked us up again at 2 p.m. and drove us to the Ulster American Folk Park. This is an open-air-museum that shows the history of the the Irish emigrating to USA. The park is made with a lot of love for details and they have transfered houses out of those years in it. We could watch a blacksmith working and we got a very good impression of the living conditions at that time. Really nice is that it is not only showing the Irish part but the American as well, so that after we had walked through a model of a ship we were in a little town showing how life was in the USA at that time. After we had finished the open-air part we proceeded into an exhibition showing details of the situation at that time. I was quite surprised that the immigrants had to pass a health check, which in case they failed meant that they were boarded on the next ship back to Ireland. An absolute no-go has been the suspicion to be mentally ill and I really don’t want to know how they checked for that…

After the Ulster American Folk Park we drove to Ballymena. Here we had rooms in the Adair Arms Hotel. A hotel that could perfectly have been built in the middleage. A lot of corners and small rooms, old decoration, absolutely picturesque. Dinner there was a real adventure as we had problems to figure out what the dessert would be and the explanation of the waiter was not really helpfull. It turned out as to be incredibly sweet and I guess nobody really finished it.

I finally managed to hurt myself on that evening in the hotel by falling UP a staircase after two (or maybe three) pear ciders. With a five centimeter laceration and big bruise on my right knee I had to spend the rest of the evening in the hotel and the others stayed there as well (i fear out of solidarity). Luckily this had not happend at the beginning of the trip. The only possibility to get me into a hospital would have been to call a helicopter to fly me to Dublin, what I absolutely didn’t want (after more than one litre of cider….that would not have been funny) so we fixed the wound with some plaster and I got ice from the kitchen to try to cool my knee. Some pain killer did the rest..so the evening was at least not totally spoiled.

On Thursday we had no hiking tour. Astrid offered us an extended city tour where she explained a lot about the history of the city[nbsp] and the civil war in Northern Ireland, where it is called „the troubles“. Luckily that day again we had wonderfull weather.

The tour started after breakfast on the Bogside of Derry. The Bogside is a district of Derry outside the city wall and has been the center of the troubles in Derry, for example the Bloody Sunday took place here. Something one just can’t ignore on the Bogside are the Murrals. These are house paintings, normally covering a complete side of a house. All Murrals refer or remind of the Troubles, so that they often cover special days or victims of that area.

There is a Murral with two persons dressed in blankets which for example tells the history of the political prisoners at the time of the Troubles. To protest against the imprisonment they started a hunger and hygiene strike and even the dressing of normal prison clothes was rejected, so that they were neglected, haggard and dressed in their blankets.

Another Murral is showing[nbsp] a demonstration for civil rights and so refers to the starting point of the Troubles. The Catholic was confronted with drawbacks compared to the Protestants. They had problems in getting higher qualified jobs and were not allowed to study in Northern Ireland. Districts like the Bogside were districts were mainly the poorer and almost only Catholic lived, so a demonstration for equality of treatment was the starting point of the Troubles.

The demonstrations soon were accompanied by violence from both sides. The demonstrating part threw stones against the armee and the armee normally took teargas to destroy the demonstration. This culminated in the Bloody Sunday, on the 30st of January 1972, where the British armee started to shoot on the demonstrators and 14 persons were deadly injured.

From the Bogside we climbed up the stairs to the city wall, where we had an absolutely perfect view over the whole Bogside. In general Derry is really a beautiful city. The city wall, that goes around the inner circle of the city is perfect for a walk around, but even here one can not ignore the Northern Ireland conflict. On the side of the Bogside the city wall is still often covered with high fences, that are still left over from the Troubles area. Those have been attached to the city wall to prevent the demonstrators to throw up Molotov cocktails and paint bombs into the inner circle. But even with this high fences it seems they somehow managed to do so because if you walk along that part of the city wall there are some houses that are covered with colour dots.

Directly along the city wall there is the biggest anglican cathedral of Northern Ireland. St. Columb’s Cathedral which has been built between 1628 and 1633. I have to admit that I was really surprised to see flags hanging down from the church ceiling that were looking as if they had been put there some hundred years ago. The Cathedral also keeps the keys to the four city gates, which are embedded into the city wall.

After we had left the Cathedral we made a short walk through the historic center and afterwards the rest of the day was completely ours.. Some of us started for a shopping tour and unfortunatly I have to admit that shopping makes much more sense and fun in Dublin. Derry is almost covered by huge shopping centers and that’s not the kind of stores I was looking for. So when we returned to the hotel I actually had bought nothing if I remember right.

The day ended again in that nice pub we had discovered on Wednesday.

On the morning of the 15th of July we had to pack our things again as we would spend that following night in Derry. But this day we would be wandering along the coast to the Giant’s Causeway, something I have wanted to do for years and never managed to.

Our shuttle picked us up at the hotel and drove us until Ballintoy where he droped us out and kept our luggage. From Ballintoy on we could be walking completely along the coast and the shuttle would pick us up again at the Giant’s Causeway and get us to Derry.

The first part went along a wonderfull beach which was called the White Park[nbsp] Bay. Luckily it was low tide, because I’m not so sure if we could have been walking there otherwise. The beach and it’s sand were mainly the reason for the low speed of the group that day. We had wonderfull blue sky and we were really slow. For my part I have to admit it is hard to walk in the sand for kilometers as I often had the feeling we weren’t moving at all, but this was maybe just a trick of the horizon in general. When we reached Portbradden it was already noon I think. There is the smallest church of Northern Ireland which doesn’t look like any church I have seen before and more like a small cottage with bells.

From Portbradden on we went uphill as the rest of the tour should be on the top of the cliffs. On the cliffs we had a perfect view, blue sky and water and a sun that was trying to burn us alive. Sunblocker was of no use as we were sweating in the sun and I finally realized for the first time that a half liter of water might not be enough for a tour like that.

Our target was the Giant’s Causeway so I will try to tell a little about the origins of it. Legends tell that this was originally a causeway to Scotland built by a giant named ionn Mac Cumhaill. Fionn was the only giant in Ireland with quite a famous possition and he heard that in Scotland was a giant as well. So Fionn built the causeway and walked over by night to have a look at the Scotish giant. When he saw him he was shocked that the Scotish one was even bigger than himself and he flew back to Ireland. The Scotish giant saw the causeway and thought exactly the same as Fionn, so he walked over to Ireland to see the Irish giant. When Fionn hat returned home and told his wife how big the other giant was his wife had a very clever idea. She dressed her husband in baby clothes and laid him on the beach. So when the Scotish giant arrived in Ireland he found a „baby“ at the beach and he was anxious by thinking..“if the babys are that big here..how may the grown ups be?“. So he flew back to Scotland and destroyed the Causeway so that the big giants from Northern Ireland were not able to follow him. No need to say that intelligence has nothing to do with height.[nbsp]

As I was so keen on seeing the Giant’s Causeway I was pretty much dissapointed when we got there. It was terribly crowded and there wasn’t even one place where I could have made a photo without people on it…so meanwhile I think the best time to see the Giant’s Causeway is the early morning (really early) when there are more or less no people around.

The bus picked us up at 4.30 p.m. and drove us to Derry where we stayed in the City Hotel which was quite modern and huge compared to our previous hotels. But in my room was a bathtub and that’s something I don’t have at home. Burnt from the sun my first action was to take a longer bath which was absolutely relaxing.

Dinner was really good, but if I think about it nowadays I can not say that this was the best hotel we had. It was the one with the most ameneties, but it was not really personal. After dinner we decided to make a short walk on the city wall, as Derry is also called „The Walled City“ and then directly ended up in a pub named Peadar O’Donnells which I can absolutely recommend!

After a great breakfast we started from Cushendall to Glenariff Forest Park. By that way we walked through the Glenariff and Astrid told us that there are nine Glens of Antrim that have there origin in glaciers that were the reason for the nine glens.Their names are Glentaisie, Glenshesk, Glendun, Glencorp, Glenaan, Glenballyearnon, Glenariff, Glencloy [&] Glenarm.

The path through the glen was mainly covered by kneehigh meadow, thistles and a huge amount of horse flies as we were walking along a small river. I was more or less occupied by keeping them off the whole time. When we finally came to the entrance of the Glenariff Forest Park we were lucky to get rid of those beasts and were all pretty much amused by the entrance singboard saying „you are now entering a stressfree zone“. This was pretty much the truth if we thought about the horse flies … Shortly after that sign there was a pub where we had lunch outside in the sun and were more or less relaxing. Certainly, when we entered the park it started to rain a little bit, even if an Irish would never use this word as it was more or less only small drops now and then and we were putting rain clothes on and off all the time.

The park itself reaches the borders of the Antrim Mountains and so we had some hiking to do but it were maximum 500 difference in altitude, so practicable for everyone. In the park there are several waterfalls and in July we had the great possibility of finding blueberries everywhere along the track which was a great dessert. The tour itself had about 20km when I remember that right and was very nice, if you don’t recall the flies.

We finished our park visit about 4 p.m and returned to that pub on the entrance. Here we sat down with a cider or beer and waited for the transfer shuttle back to Cushendall. As we were pretty soon in the hotel that day we had the possibility to go shopping until we met again for dinner. This time after dinner we gathered all the armchairs in the entrance hall in one circle and Astrid told us about the history of the Giant’s Causeway as this would be our target of the next day.

On the morning of the 13th of July we had to pack our luggage again as the next night would be in a different hotel. Luckily we could leave the luggage in the hotel, as the bus transfer would[nbsp] pick us up at the end of our tour and we would get the luggage after that.

This day was really special for me as we would go the the Mourne Mountains and we would face 1000 meter different in heights…which I have never done before (by my own feet) and I was pretty curious how hard or easy this would be. The mountain we would climb was Slieve Donard and the tour was very impressing.

We started at about 10 a.m with sunshine and pretty good weather and walked through Newcastle. There we suddenly faced a march of the Orange Order, a very small one, and luckily it seemed that really nobody did care or was offended by it.

After we left Newcastle we walked through Donard Park constantly upwards along a small river. A really nice and impressing way. The sun was shining and luckily we were mainly covered under trees, otherwise I would have burnt my skin already on that day. The way itself started with small stones which became bigger the higher we got, until later one we mainly had to climb and I had to store my camera in my rucksack as I needed both hands to be sure not to fall. We crossed an old icehouse, something I have never seen before and followed Glen River until a time one could hardly say we were following a „way“. The last meters were pretty steep and then we reached the top right between Slieve Donard und Slieve Commedagh. Here we learned that the wall running across the mountains was called the „Mourne Wall“ and was originally built to protect the area from sheep and other animals as a part of that mountains was used as water reservoir.

When we reached the top we had almost 5 minutes before fog and rain were coming. It happend quickly and it was depressing as normally we would have been able to view the whole mountains from that point. Nevertheless we spent our lunch time attached to the wall (as protection from wind and rain) and then crossed the wall and started to get down on the other side. The way down was much more exhausting than the way upwards. We could hardly see anything and our „way“ was only big stones and marshland, so that I often stumbled or twisted my ankle and I was absolutely impressed that nothing worse happend. During the way down we also had to face pretty hard rain and for me it seemed that the way down was longer than the way up, which is probably nonsense. We climbed downwards until we reached „Bloody Bridge“ where we were supposed to meet our busshuttle, and as were were all pretty wet we were absolutely happy when the bus arrived. Most of us used the stop at the Newcastle Hotel to change clothes or at least shoes before the bus went off with us in direction[nbsp] of Cushendall on the northern coast of Ireland.[nbsp]

The hotel in Cushendall was „The Glen’s Hotel“ a pretty old but nevertheless extremely cosy and we all went in our rooms to take a shower and have a 10 minutes rest. We met again for diner and afterwards went off for a local pub. We finally ended up in Joe McCollams, a nice and crowed pub with live music and an old grandpa sitting at the fireplace. The first time I ended up drinking pear cider…..

The next day, 12th of July, is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland, as on that day the Battle of Boyne took place. This requires a short trip into Irish history. The Battle of Boyne took place on the 12th July 1690 and is the reason or basis of the later upcoming conflicts between the catholics and anglicans in Northern Ireland. Every year the Orange Order is celebrating it’s victory over the Irish and the marches that take place on that day have often been the reason for troubles in Northern Ireland during the last years. I was curious if we would see such a march of the Orange Order, but the way to Tollymore Park didn’t lead us near the town and it was unlikely that we would meet them in the park.

The whole day was acompanied by a change of rain and sun, which is the typicall Irish weather and luckily we were mostly underneath the trees and didn’t even need weatherproof jackets and things like that. The Tollymore Forrest Park has a huge range of old and very big trees and a small river running through the park. The park has been founded in the 18th century and some of the trees are still out of that time. The park slightly reaches the Mourne Mountains so that we only had a very small rise to face. The tour lasted until 4 p.m, when we reached Newcastle Town and therefore had the possiblity to take a walk along the beach and drink a coffee. Newcastle town has an excellent coffee by the way. It’s name is „KREM“ and it’s situated on the main street. They also serve the typicall Irish cake and cookies (for everybody who doesn’t like it too sweet, be carefull!)

The day ended in the pub again …

On 11th of July 2009 I started of to my first guided hiking tour in Northern Ireland, organised by Highländer Travel. Due to a really early flight from Frankfurt I already had to get up at 5 a.m. When I arrived at the airport I realised that my trip to Northern Ireland started at the same day as the local school holidays, so that the airport was pretty croweded at that time already. I took me over 30 minutes to get throught the passport control as there were only 2 counters opened (clever idea at the beginning of the holidays) and there was a time when I was pretty much sure that I would miss my flight. Luckily that didn’t happen…

The flight itself went pretty good, even if the pilot told us before we had to face problems with the weather and he calculated with 15 minutes delay. When we reached Dublin I checked my documents again, telling me I would meet the guide and the rest of the group on the chauffeur’s point. This isn’t really a „point“. When I came out of the arrival area there were already people standing who held signs of Highländer and several tours. Luckily there was as well someone with a Northern Ireland sign and her name was Astrid. She told me that we still had an hour to wait on a flight from southern Germany before our transfer to Northern Ireland would start.

At 2.00 p.m. we started with a group of 14 people in a small bus. Our first night we would spend in a town that was called Newcastle, unfortunatly that town has nothing to do with the Newcastle Browne Ale… The hotel we stayed in was the Burrendale Hotel and the transfer there took us about 2 and a half hours. The hotel itself is a pretty modern Spa hotel with sauna and swimming pool (not what one would normally expect in a small town in Northern Ireland)[nbsp] and it was situated a good walk outside Newcastle.

We got our room keys and agreed to meet for dinner where Astrid was going to explain the upcoming tour for the next day to us.

Dinner in the Burrendale Hotel was pretty much typically Irish. Meat, Fish or Chicken with a typical mix of vegetables and potatoes in all possible kind of ways. That kind of dinner would not really change throught out the upcoming week, which became a problem especially for the vegetarians, as vegetarian food in Northern Ireland is mainly noodles with vegetables.

After Dinner Astrid explained to us the route for the next day. We would walk through the Tollymore Forrest Park and the tour would only be about 5 hours, mainly to get used to the weather and the walking itself.

The day ended in the hotel’s bar with a pint of Guiness or Cider, absolutely normal for Ireland.