A Couple of Days in Belfast

June 20, 2025 to June 22, 2025

We had scheduled three nights in Belfast. Dave had never been here and I was here once in 1998. It’s changed a bit! (When I was in Ireland in 1998 there was a bomb threat on the train between Dublin and Belfast so we all had to disembark and take a bus the rest of the way.)

Tara Lodge has convenient bike parking at the back of the interior car park in a little slot next to the toilet:

It's not pictured, but it was secure, accessible and covered, just weirdly by an outdoor toilet.

The first morning I rode my bike down to the Coiste Murals at Divis Tower for a three hour political tour. It would possibly mean leaving my bike outside in an unknown area and we struggled with whether to do that. Dave decided not to go on the tour because walking and standing around is the thing that most aggravates his knee (plus I think he just wanted time to himself to do laundry). He did however ride down to the Divis Tower with me to make sure I got there safely (a nice husband) and then he went off to do laundry. The tour guides happily let me store my bike in an office in Divis Tower.

Divis Tower in the Catholic neighborhood of Falls Road, West Belfast. It was notorious because the Brit’s used the top floors as a lookout post during the Troubles.

It’s hard to know how to talk about the Troubles, because it is so complicated. The Irish conflict was covered a lot by the press where I lived growing up in Canada. My folks were conservative and pro-British to boot. Their view - which I picked up and accepted for a long time - was that the IRA were all terrorists and that was pretty much and beginning and end of the story. It was only later - when I first visited Ireland in 1998 - that I started to understand the terrible cost that British colonization of Ireland inflicted on the Irish people and how that infects everything.

Reader Alert: if you don’t care about Irish history - no need to read the next section. But if you do:

The short story: a deposed Irish King, Dermot MacMacMurragh of Leinster, invited some Normans from England over in 1169 to help him win his kingdom back. They never left. (Talk about unintended consequences). The Brits gradually colonized Ireland through the centuries, which meant giving away Irish land to British settlers and portraying Irish people as subhuman. Do you remember a common sign seen in Britain during the 50s & 60s: “No dogs, no blacks, no Irish?” Through the centuries Irish Nationalists periodically rebelled and the British government tried three times to pass “home rule” (self-government) for Ireland but it failed to pass through the British Parliament, primarily because of the vociferous protests from British Protestants living in Ireland.

A common sign above. Our IRA guide on the tour had a shirt that said: “More dogs, more blacks, more Irish.” But I failed to get a pic.

Britain finally passed a limited Home Rule bill in 1920 that created a separate Irish Free State in the south (ultimately becoming the Republic of Ireland) but severed the predominantly Protestant six counties in the North to remain with Britain if they wished.

The Northern Ireland Parliament then enacted a number of legislative polices designed to preserve Protestant power and discriminate against Catholics, making it harder for them to get jobs and buy property. Catholic discontentment boiled over in August 1969 with a riot that led to a thirty - year conflict, the center of which was West Belfast. The violence ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Accords, brokered with the help of the Clinton and Blair administrations, that set up a power-sharing agreement among the various political parties.

The Tour:

The format was a walk through Falls Road (the Catholic area of West Belfast) with an IRA former political prisoner named Pod. After an hour and a half Pod handed us off to Mark who is from a Loyalist family. Mark talked and walked us through Shankill Road (the Protestant section). Both men grew up in these neighborhoods in West Belfast and as you can see from their background, these guys were the real deal.

Pod was in the IRA for his whole life, coming from an IRA family, and he was a political prisoner of the British for 14 years. Mark, the Loyalist, came from a family whose house was burnt out in 1972 due to the conflict; when he was 17 he joined the British military, and spent his career there, serving, among other places, in Belfast and Afghanistan. His grandfather died in WW2 and his great grandfather died at the Battle of the Somme in WW1. To say he is extremely patriotic to the British empire is an understatement.

Both guys did what lawyers do; took the facts most favorable to their position and focused on them and glossed over or ignored all the facts that suggest a more nuanced picture. They also were very emotional about their points of view which made it hard to ask questions. I found it fascinating to hear their stories and viewpoints, but it was also frustrating because their positions, so understandable based on their own realities, were at the extreme edges of the debate. Both the Falls Road and Shankill Road neighborhoods were filled with memorials, murals, gardens that emphasized their own points of view.

Murals on the Falls Road side. All the murals in both neighborhoods are political. This one has Catholics who died in the conflict. Divis tower is on the left.

Mural of Bobby Sands, the IRA prisoner who died in Maze prison after a long hunger strike in 1981.

And mural from the Shankill side, celebrating the English Monarchy

This is a mural on the building on Shankill Road where the Ulster Volunteer Force was formed - this was the paramilitary force formed by the Loyalist side to fight the IRA.

From Pod, the IRA guy: He focused on the discrimination that Catholics suffered leading up to the Troubles (it sounded terrible) and the Special Powers Act that Britain used to arrest people without warrant and imprison people indefinitely in inhuman conditions. We saw photos of the terrible prison conditions (prison cells with naked prisoners, excrement and menstrual blood on the walls because there was no adequate toilet facilities). As a lawyer the lack of due process he described freaks me out - and should freak you out too. He also focused on the details of the atrocities the British soldiers committed when killing unarmed Catholics, which happened repeatedly.

On the other hand, Pod totally skipped over all the bombings the IRA committed including killing many children, women and innocent people, including in far flung places in England.

From Mark, the Loyalist: He focused on the terrible atrocities the IRA committed and we saw lots of memorials and photos of people bombed and killed in Shankill Road. He also focused on his description of how the IRA and Sinn Fein (the political party of the IRA) still want to kick out all the Loyalists that live in Northern Ireland. (I actually don’t know if this is true but that was his repeated description of it.) He also focused on how terrible it was that all these IRA leaders that killed innocent people were all pardoned as part of the Good Friday Accords in 1998 and are now running Northern Ireland politics. He hates the Good Friday Accords and Tony Blair, the British PM at the time, and doesn't think Northern Ireland is any better off than it was before the Accords were signed.

Mark, our Loyalist guide in a memorial park off Shankill Road.

On the other hand, Mark totally skipped over the root cause of the conflict, the discrimination that Catholics faced in Northern Ireland, and the atrocities committed by the British government.

Both men were in agreement about the Peace Wall. There are 34 km of peace walls around Belfast. These were built beginning in 1969 after the Troubles started and the purpose was to split the two warring neighborhoods apart. The peace walls still exist today and every night at 9 pm the gates are closed separating the two neighborhoods. Their continued existence continues as a powerful symbol of the conflict.

Gates of the Peace Wall that still close every night.

I felt pretty depressed that not much has changed.

On the other hand:

After the walk Brona, a woman on the tour, randomly offered to give me a ride back to my bike parked at Divis Tower. She was a Belfast native from a Republican family now with young adult children. She said she has a totally different perspective. She said that things are way better now than when she was a child, and her children are growing up in a much better situation. She disagreed a lot with the perspectives of both men on the tour.

After the tour I rode out to meet Dave at St. George Market, where we met for lunch at Stock Kitchen and Bar where I shared the details of the tour. (He shared the details of his laundry morning which were considerably less distressing).

That night we went and watched the Mission Impossible film - I needed to chill out.

The following day we spent the morning working on the journal and catching up with various chores. In the afternoon we rode our bikes down to the Belfast Harbor and toured the HMS Caroline, a 100 year old C-class light cruiser from the Royal Navy. It was decommissioned and refurbished for tours in 2011 after serving in WW1, WW2 and during the Cold War. We were surprised at how nice it was. Relative to other ships I have toured, it was pretty roomy. (Dave assured me that once you squeeze 300 men onboard with all the smells and steam, with oil and water sloshing around it wouldn’t look nearly so nice). The HMS Caroline took part in the Battle of Jutland in 1916, the major naval battle of WW1. It had an ambiguous resolution. Britain lost many more ships and men (6000 men and 14 ships lost compared to 2500 men and 11 ships lost for the German navy) but it weakened the Germany naval capacity enough that Germany never attempted another major confrontation and this allowed Britain to preserve its shipping lanes. Most of my knowledge of WW1 is all about trench and land warfare so learning about the naval battle was helpful and new to me.

After that we went over to tour the Titanic Belfast museum, a glitzy new museum opened in 2012 as part of an effort to revitalize the huge Belfast Harbor, previously one of the largest shipbuilding facilities in the world. The Titanic was built in the Belfast Harbor and set sail in 1912. The Museum had a bit of the feel of a Disneyland ride (including a "Pirates of the Caribbean" like ride midway thorough the exhibit). It explained the story of Belfast and how it became an industrial power in the 1880s and then explained how the Titanic was built, which is actually pretty interesting. Dave and I both felt like the Museum beat the topic like a dead horse, but maybe we just don’t find the Titanic as fascinating as it has become in popular culture. We liked it - it just wasn’t as riveting to us as it might be to others.

We rode our bikes back to the hotel along the River on a very nice bike trail.

Great bike trail along the river in Belfast

We have been very impressed by Belfast; it’s an appealing, approachable city.

We had the most forgettable dinner we have had in Ireland on the last night at Holohan’s Pantry, a Rick Steves recommended place in the Queen’s University neighborhood. It advertised authentic Irish food - maybe that should have been our clue! We split a boxty, which is an Irish potato pancake (like a thicker type of crepe) filled with overcooked chicken in a cream sauce. The laughably terrible service didn't help.

We leave for Scotland tomorrow so are ready to start the next part of our adventure.

Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 1,730 km (1,074 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	5
Comment on this entry	Comment	0