Friday 23rd August
Our last full day in Belfast and
surrounds started slowly with a walk around the main centre of
Belfast. We dropped in to the Town Hall, picked up a souvenir for a
friend and some sandwiches for later in the day. While I was sitting
on a park bench checking through some photos I was approached by a
man leading a walking group. He introduced himself as a street
photographer, had seen me sitting there and thought I might make for
an interesting photo. It put it down to the hat.
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| Belfast Town Hall |
That walk was followed by a drive
around the inner suburbs of Belfast. In the years just after the
first World War, Rob's great-aunt spent some time in Europe,
including in Belfast, visiting various Roman Catholic Cathedrals and
writing about what she discovered for a Melbourne Catholic newspaper.
Those articles are available through the wonderful work done by the
National Library of Australia's Trove project. So Rob was interested
in seeing some of the same places, take a few photos and then compare
what she saw with the published articles when we get back home.
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| Bobby Sands |
When we got to the Cathedral, however,
a funeral was in place so we decided to park the car nearby off the
Falls Road and to have a wander around the streets. We found a batch
on a wall all featuring Victorian Trades Unions, and, of course, the
big Bobby Sands mural on the side of the Sinn Fein building.
By the time we'd seen all we wanted the
funeral was out and the coffin was being carried up the street from
the Cathedral and then down the Falls Road. The pall bearers were
changing over every 25 metres or so. I'm not sure if any tool on
second shifts but I presume they did.
A quick wander round the cathedral –
nothing of great interest there – and it was time to be off out
into the country-side towards Dromara to see some third-cousins of
Robyn's – both called Mary.
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| Arthur Doyle's headstone |
They took us for a drive around the
community looking at gravestones, then to local cafe for a coffee,
and then back to another cemetery where Robyn found the headstone of
Arthur Doyle, another of her great-great-grandfathers, and the father
of Patrick Doyle who we had tracked down at Queen's University two
days before.
The afternoon passed very quickly and
then it was a rush back into Belfast for dinner with Renee and Henry
who were in town for the European Science Fiction Convention. We'd
seen them only in passing in Dublin the week before so it was good to
catch up over a few beers and a meal.
Exhausted again.
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