A Weekend at Home in Belfast

Well haaay! Firstly, I'm so sorry I haven't posted much in a while, I've been buried chin-deep from a relentless barrage of uni work and it hasn't been fun but I'm back now, thank goodness, and ready to bombard you with my usual biweekly ramblings! Also, apologies for the poor image quality, I left my camera back at uni this weekend because it was a bit too bulky to fit into my bag so all of these photos were just taken on my iPhone.

17

Weekend Roundup

3

A Day in Pictures | A Meeting in Manchester

I love reading these kinds of 'day in the life' posts and I've been meaning to do one for ages but I haven't really had very many very interesting days recently, just a lot of lectures and uni work! Yesterday though I ended up taking a short trip to Manchester to go to a training session for working as a student language ambassador in the North West and thought since it was something a little different I'd take a few little pictures of my day.

I know for a lot of you English folk, especially if you're from the North, trips to Manchester may be somewhat of a regular occurrence, but I'd never really been before (except one time for a couple of hours when I got hopelessly lost) so hopping onto the train yesterday morning I felt as though I was embarking on a very exciting adventure indeed. One thing I can therefore definitely say after yesterday is that the novelty of living on "the mainland" really hasn't worn off me one bit- you mean I can get the train to London or Edinburgh from my local station?!- because whenever you're in Ireland, you're just you know, in Ireland. The public transport at home really isn't that great, for example, the train lines only cover about half the country so if you want to go to a more obscure location you're pretty much screwed. One fine example was a time my friend and I wanted to go to this little place called Moneymore to go llama trekking (yes, that's a thing), it was only about an hour away by car but we had to cancel due to the fact it would have taken us a good three hours to get there on buses and trains with a few changes in between, and obviously a six-hour round trip to spend 40 minutes walking a llama wasn't really feasible nor a sensible use of our time.

Anyway, when I got off the train at Oxford Road station I literally hadn't a notion where I was going. How people survived without Google Maps I do not know. The event was at Manchester Metropolitan University which thankfully was really straightforward to find, it was just straight up the road from the station. The trickier part was finding the right building once I got to campus since the one I was looking for was sort of tucked away behind the other campus buildings, though I did manage to find it quite easily once I'd gotten myself in the right direction. 

I wish I'd taken a photo of the inside of the building the event was in because it was so cool, it kind of looked like an airport departure lounge. I actually really liked the whole campus in general, it's got a nice buzz about it and is circled around a little park which was looking really pretty and autumnal yesterday as I was passing through.

The meeting ended up wrapping up a little early so I took my time strolling back towards the train station, appreciating the sights and sounds. I'm not at all accustomed to big cities because frankly, we don't really have them back home. I'm not sure if I'd call Belfast a "big city" by the rest of the UK's standards, so I always find cities like London or Liverpool really interesting and exciting and sometimes I'm kind of taken aback by it all, like I'm almost surprised places like this actually exist.

I arrived home around half 7, later than expected as my train was delayed by nearly 15 minutes... (not ideal). I then ended up heading out in Lancaster with my friend Louise where I danced like a freaking maniac, fell on my ass in the club at one stage (and have the massive bruise to prove it!) and then polished off a McDonald's quarter pounder meal and 6 chicken nuggets on the walk home. Oh, and if you have yet to hear of "the Great McDonald's Fanta Spillage Fiasco of 2014" you might like to check out my twitter feed. There were many tears. In fact, I still haven't fully recovered.

But hey, that was my day for you all, I hope you all had a very good day yourselves and are enjoying the October autumness as much as I am these days (unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case I hope you're having lovely Spring).

18

Saturday Roadtrip | Walled Gardens & Wild Flowers

Last weekend my cousin Jenny and I took a little roadtrip around the Causeway Coastal Route around the north Antrim coast of Northern Ireland. The route has some really stunning views and its also a very very long drive, I think it took us around 7 hours and we didn't even go the whole way around! But roadtrips are basically my favourite thing ever so I was in my element.

We set off around 12, stopping for lunch at a lookout along the way, and then as we were driving along we saw signposts for Glenarm Castle Walled Gardens and Tearoom. Neither of us had ever been there before so we decided to stop and I'm so glad we did. The garden was beautiful, it was just filled with so much colour particularly from the thousands of wild flowers growing everywhere. I think that was my favourite thing about it. There were also apple and pear trees, water features, statues and a mount where you could look out over the garden. It was a really misty day and you could see the fog settling over the hills and trees in the distance which I think added to the atmosphere. I just wish my camera was able to capture it better! Jenny had brought her DSLR with her so we both wandered around for a while taking photos which was really relaxing, we both even managed to snap a picture of a butterfly that was sitting on one of the flowers.

After about an hour we heading off again and started noticing that there were quite a few cyclists on the road, then a few cyclists turned into a couple dozen cyclists and then eventually we were stuck behind hordes of cyclists before realising there was actually a huge cycle event around the coastal route. Just our luck! On the bright side, we were moving so slowly we really had time to appreciate the scenery haha.

Along the road we also stopped at Dunluce Castle, a medieval castle that sits basically on the very top of a cliff plunging down into the ocean. It's one of the more famous castle in Northern Ireland and is really very striking. We didn't go in this time as it was about to close but we took some photos from the cliffs overlooking it. It's been a really long time since I've visited properly so I desperately want to go back soon and have a proper look around.

And so we began the long journey home, though not before stopping for dinner at a restaurant on Portstewart promenade. Can we just take a moment to appreciate the sheer size of Jenny's filled Yorkshire pudding? Because it's pretty massive! One thing I love about the fact Jenny and I have grown up together is being able to reminisce about our childhoods and family, especially the ones who aren't around any more, it's nice to be able to sit and chat about everyone and just remember, which is what we spent a lot of time doing in the car and at dinner. Then, on the way home in the car we just had the music blaring, soundtrack for the day being 'Chandelier' by Sia, which is one of my favourite songs of the whole year, and also by far my favourite music video. I've probably watched it about 26 hundred thousand million times.

I know it's a bit late to say now but I hope you all had a lovely weekend yourselves!

follow me on twitter? @alphabethblog

15

Coastal Adventures in Dundrum, Co. Down

Over the weekend a couple of my friends and I went on a little adventure to a place called Dundrum in Co. Down, a little town on the coast surrounded by the Mourne Mountains. We went up in the early evening on Saturday night so we were there whenever the sun started to set, which was beautiful, especially because the moon was so bright. We parked the car and headed down the pathway through Murlough National Nature Reserve towards the beach. It started getting dark quite quickly after we arrived so that was the only part of our trip I really managed to capture (my camera isn't great in the dark), but since Robin Williams's death my friend Chris (who was still a nutcase before this) has been moved to "suck the marrow" out of life- a reference from Williams's role in "the Dead Poets' Society"- so as soon as we reached the beach, he stripped down in the pitch black and ran half-naked into the sea. He has since caught a cold, but fair play to him I guess, I think we could all do with sucking the marrow a little more, because let's face it, life is short! I think Robin William's sudden death has really proven that to all of us in these last few weeks. I've certainly been thinking about it anyway.

When Chris had enough of frolicking around in the water and had dried himself off we headed back and up to Dundrum Castle which sits on a grassy hill overlooking the town. The castle was built by John De Courcy, an Anglo-Norman knight, during his conquest of Ulster around the turn of the 13th Century. As like many of the castles in Ireland, Dundrum Castle is now in ruins but at one time it was a strong and imposing structure, passed through the hands of kings, knights and earls over the course of its time, and so is seeped in history. If you'd like to read a bit more, I found this little PDF from Northern Ireland's Department of the Environment. I'll confess, the castle is pretty creepy in the dark and I was a little bit nervous but we still went up and had a good wander round anyways! Because it was so dark though the stars were really bright which was nice.

After that little adventure we headed back home (though not before stopping for a cheeky McDonald's!) and I went straight to my bed. It was a really lovely, fun night though, I really want to do it again soon!

14

Scenes | The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Cultra

I'm not sure if folk parks are a 'thing' outside of Ireland or what their equivalent is in the rest of the world (I remember going to something similar in Ballarat in Victoria, Australia - Sovereign Hill, anyone?) but we have a couple of them in Northern Ireland. Basically they're what I would describe as outdoor living history museums full of old buildings- banks, farms houses, cottages, printing presses, you name it, all dating from a certain period in local history that you can wander around and experience how the people of the time would have lived. The parks also often have employees in period dress  in the various houses demonstrating different skills and trades from the time, such as basket weaving or spinning wool.

One of these parks, The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum isn't too far from me but I hadn't been in years and years, not since I was little. However, my family and I decided to do something a little different yesterday afternoon and pay a visit.

This museum actually has two parts, as the name suggests, there's the folk park and then there's the transport museum which houses various old cars, trains and buses from the past 100 years or so up to the present day. There's also a Titanic exhibition as well. However, we were a little tight for time yesterday so we only made it around the folk park and even then there was still a lot of things we didn't get to see! You'd definitely need to allow yourself the full day if you were ever thinking of visiting. I think they recommend you allow 1-2 hours for the village part of the folk part, 2-3 hours for the rural part and then another couple of hours to get around the transport part of the museum.

I realised as I was uploading that I didn't take many photos of the interiors of the different houses. I guess I didn't want to overload you with pictures and I wasn't sure if it would interest anyone but I did take a few photos just so you could get a bit of a feel for the place!

I'd definitely recommend a visit to the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum if you're ever in the area!

12