Binevenagh

Another from our trip to Gortmore - looking West towards Binevenagh, a beautiful, table-top hill/mountain:

There's a pretty decent viewing point here from which to point your camera over.  Even though there's a stone wall you can't be doing with looking over it for too long, for there be a steep drop on t'other side.

In days gone by my grandfather would take us boys fishing down there...at the River Roe, just under Binevenagh.  It was pretty special, even when few fish were caught.

Gortmore

We drove up to Gortmore the other day - the viewing point near Binevenagh, from where you can look over to Inishowen and onto the plain that is Magilligan:

Looking down on Magilligan Strand and over the Foyle Estuary towards Donegal.  As you can see it turned out a pretty grey day without much decent light around - a big bank of cloud almost enveloping Inishowen.  It was lovely, though - not cold and not too windy.  In a couple of months time it will be very different, with the cold North-Westerlys trying to separate your head from your shoulders.

Evidence

Evidence, should it ever be needed, that there was murderous intent in the house on Saturday night:

Notice the effect that pointing a camera has on people around The Liberties.

OK, so this time it was the bread that got cut - for jammy toast before bedtime - but next time?  Who knows...

St Thomas' Parish Church

St Thomas' sits on Rathlin Island - beside Church Bay, naturally enough.  It's a lovely little stone church, which has been here for around 200 years or so.

But that's not the whole story, since like most places in this part of the world a bit of history abounds.  No, there has been a church on this site since around the year 580, thanks initially to St Comgall of Bangor, near Belfast.

The oldest gravestone in the cemetery dates back to 1655.

As you get closer to it, you can't fail to notice four near identical gravestones near the roadside:

Buried here are 7 British sailors who died when HMS Viknor was lost in high seas in the middle of a heavily mined area off the Donegal Coast during the First World War, in 1915.  Of the 295 who perished, 7 bodies were washed up on Rathlin and only one was identifiable - Petty Officer J J Walton.  There are several other war graves in the cemetery.

The church is very simple inside - whitewashed walls and plain glass windows.  Lovely.

There was a small exhibition in the Church when we visited.  It was the story of another shipwreck - the Arandora Star.  A very interesting story, actually - World War II this time.  The Arandora Star was a troop ship which was sunk in July 1940.   On this final voyage her mission was to take Italian and German internees and German POWs to Canada.  U-boat 47 struck her with her final torpedo, which the U-bath captain thought was faulty, but clearly wasn't and the ship went down.  About half of the people on board died - over 800.

The Rathlin connection lies in the fact that two bodies were washed up near the West Lighthouse.  One had no identification marks but the other had papers to suggest he was a Giuseppe Capella, once waiter in the Savoy Hotel, London.   Both are buried in St Thomas graveyard.  There is a very touching story about Signor Capella's boyhood friend, Luigi Zazzi, who was last seen in the water with Capella.  Following some research by local man Michael McRitchie into the Italians lost from the Arandora Star who are buried all along the North of Ireland and West of Scotland, Signor Zazzi's grandson, who lives in New Zealand, got in touch with Mr McRitchie.  He had no idea that any bodies had been recovered from the sea and expressed comfort in the knowledge that the body washed up alongside Signor Capella just might have been that of his uncle.  The full story is here.

Dune walk

Portstewart Strand, up on the dunes.  Printed last night on Kentmere RC and given a quick wash in sepia.

Vanscape

The Very Talented Andrea across the water there on the Isle of Lewis has some pretty useful snaps of caravans which I have been admiring.

I took this snap some time ago in what passed for summer this year, when on Rathlin with The Brother.  You may recall that at the time I was commenting about the fact that when things wear out on the island they are parked up and left at the mercy of the elements to slowly decay.

I like the table out front - it looks like the owners were just setting up for lunch and popped down to the shop to get some things...in the meantime the whole back end of the van has collapsed.  

I was also commenting about the new ferry which the island is getting - whether they need it or not.  I rather cleverly snapped up the two current ferries in one frame.

The bigger, slower ferry in the background can take vehicles whereas the new, faster one in front only takes people.  And dogs.

The Stones

The Stones is the colloquial term for the Giant's Causeway and I had occasion to go there recently, when an old friend stopped by for a couple of days.

It was busy.  Heck, it's always busy.  I should go at night, really...but apparently it's busy then too, with local photographers, wouldn't you know.

The stones are pretty impressive, truth be told:

This big old lump of rock caught my eye - well, hard not to, isn't it?  Looks like some Giant has plonked it there :) I was trying to hide the people around the back of it, but I failed miserably, on account of not taking into account that I was using the rangefinder, if you see what I mean.  21mm lens on HP5+ dunked in ID-11 and scanned.  There might have been an orange filter on the lens.

The Causeway is an area where the rocks have formed into columns of hexagonal shape, on account of volcanic activity several years ago.   There's about 40,000 of them, apparently and it's Northern Ireland's only Unesco World Heritage site.  There are similar stones on the Scottish Isle of Staffa, just across the water.

I gave up trying to get shots without people in them.  Mostly folk wander about, looking at the stones, photographing them and listening to the audio guide that they pick up at the Visitors' Centre.  

If you want to see what the stones looked like around the year 1900, check out the very first blog post on NE Liberties - here.