Antrim Coast and Carrickfergus Castle

We drove down the coast from Ballycastle, through Cushendun and Larne to Carrickfergus. It is a very beautiful coastline with views across to The Mull of Kintyre (Scotland) with England on the horizon. Our little Ford Fiesta is a bit small and buzzy after the Peugeot that we rather liked.



Carrickfergus has one of the largest and best preserved castles in all of UK. It protects the 'Belfast Lough', the inlet leading to Belfast, where the 'Titanic' was built. And, there's the song 'I wish I was in Carrickfergus'. Hayley does a nice rendition, but here is Charlotte Church.



The Keep was built by John de Courcy about 1177. It is about 30m high and the walls are between 3 and 5m thick. Here his pageboy and I are holding his horse's bridle.



The Keep included this banquet room.



In the early 13th Century the Middle Ward was built including 4 towers for archers to protect against invaders.



More modifications were made between 1225 and 1250 and the cannons used in the 17th Century.

There have been several invasions, sieges, successful and unsuccessful attacks on the castle over the years. The French succeeded in taking it in 1760.



The town didn't impress us, except for this mural!

All the days we have been here in our cottage on Drones Road near Armoy we have not been able to put 'go home' into the GPS and actually get there. Two of the 4 roads to the North of Armoy are closed for 6 weeks for water-main construction, and for 2 days now the police have closed Drones Road due to a security scare just a couple of miles from us, necessitating a diversion through country lanes to bypass the roadblock. We see a lot of Union Jacks and St George flags flying in the local towns and they all seem to have an Orange hall. Doug has not been able to use his Irish yet, it seems the Catholic schools teach it but the Protestant schools don't. After 400 years of English influence here, they are a long way from finding a future together.