We got up and had breakfast delighting in seeing a sunny morning sky. David would be taking us about today, while Ellie took it a little bit easy due to a cold that she had.
David was an excellent tour guide. Our first stop was at quite an ancient mound that had once had a wooden fort on the top. It was called the Holywood Motte. It was a structure put up by the Normans. We continue marvel at how old things are around the area.
We then went onto a wonderful open air Ulster Folk Museum. Both of us totally enjoy these places where buildings that could be of been demolished were rescued, moved or reassembled and put together. This is done in a way that current people could see and learn about how life was back in the old days. This one was particularly well done.
There was quite a nice downtown area, including a general store and an actual working pub with quite a knowledgeable young woman who was the pub keeper. She was sorry that she couldn’t sell us any alcohol until afternoon on Sunday. We all agreed 10 o’clock Sunday morning isn’t our best drinking alcohol time. But we enjoyed chatting with her.
There were lots of other interesting buildings and interesting interpreters. Another one that was very fun was a large home that had a woman there who was baking Irish soda bread over a heat fire. Neither Dick or Patti had ever actually seen peat burning before, and Patti was able to take one of the blocks of dried peat, (which is a boggy mossy kind of plant that had been dried out) and added it to the fire. It made quite a bit of smoke and had an interesting distinctive odor. Later on in the day, we would stop back and have a chance to taste the Irish soda bread made on a hanging griddle over the open fire.
We walked around and we looked at so many different kinds of buildings, including farmhouse and old churches. One really interesting one was a mill where they made shovels and spades. Apparently Ireland has dozens of types of specific spades used for many different things, including digging potatoes and digging up peat moss. There was a very funny movie and we really enjoyed learning more about this.
We also saw a little building that was the place that farmers would post someone to protect their flax plants from being stolen. Fascinating. and we had a great conversation with a young man who was showing us how he had learned to do whittling with some beautifully wood carved objects.
We also looked at some farm animals, including pigs, donkeys and chickens. The whole museum was set on beautiful Irish green grass and forested areas. It was really a delightful day to be out and enjoying the beautiful historic buildings.
We almost made it all the way through our time with without rain, but then the heavens opened up when we were at our last building. It rained really, really hard. And after we read all the interpretive signs in the final church, we finally decided we were going to have to run for it. We were very wet by the time we got to the car. Patti and Dick had left the rain jackets in the car thinking oh it’s not going to rain, but our Irish host had brought his jacket along. Smart and experienced.
Following this, we drove up the road to a beautiful old Manor, Mount Stewart. This was owned by the Stewart family and is now administered by the National Trust. Again, it was really raining hard so we did a couple of mad dashes and eventually ended up in inside where we had some lovely tea and scones.
And then we moved along to a quick tour inside this particularly lovely old manor. The furniture and use of natural lighting were amazing. They had a couple of paintings that were well known, including the funny one of a racehorse.
There were several interpretive docent who were happy to give us much more information about the family that lived there, and about the guests that would’ve come in the glory days.
This place also had a special chapel that was part of the manner. The docet of there had lots of interesting stories to tell. And he shared that he liked not only to tell the facts, but also the gossip about the family who had been there. He was also a delight.
We were so pleased to see that the sun had come out and we could go out into the garden. We were surprised to see that there was a classic car show that had old beautiful cars there, and we admired some of them. But we quickly moved into the huge gardens.
There were all kinds of shrubs, flowers and trees. We were surprised to see, just as we’ve seen in Northern Wales, some California Sequoia trees. We seriously had no idea that this was a British thing to do in terms of traveling around and bringing back species of trees, including ones that really shouldn’t grow here. Fun to see them. The flowers were particularly nice and we enjoyed watching the sunshine on them.
There was also a series of animal sculptures that were created in the 1920s with a new sculptural medium: concrete. We especially enjoyed seeing the dodo birds and the dinosaurs. Lots of fun things to look at.
On our way back into the town of Hollywood, David pointed out the first of a towering pile of pallets that we would see. Things were getting ready for a protestant celebration on July 12. This was a long historical celebration of William of Orange. He invaded the area in northern Ireland, and the protestants put bonfires on the shore to show him the way. This is now become a cultural event that happens every year within increasingly large sizes of bonfires. We would see many more of these once we went into the city of Belfast.
We enjoyed the drive-through the countryside, and eventually went back to the house where we met up with Ellie and their son, Owen.
We drove together into the downtown area, where we went to a charming restaurant with a view of the Belfast Loch. There was lots of great food, including Patti trying a traditional roast beef Sunday dinner including Yorkshire pudding and Dick had a lovely salmon meal. It was fun having good conversation and for a while having the whole restaurant just to ourselves. Really nice.
Then, back to the house where we watched some of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. Dick noticed it was different watching the official clock at Wimbledon be at the same time as we were when we were watching . This had never happened to us before. We also watched some soccer or football as it was called here. And we ended the evening by a British version of Antique Roadshow. It was really fun to see some of the very British items that people had squirreled away in their houses.
Well, at last time for bed as it had been a big day.
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