Blue Moon's trip around the UK

Now there’s three words I didn’t expect to write in the same sentence, and to my shame I may as well confess that if a month ago you’d asked me to voice the first three words that came to mind when you said ‘Antrim’ then I guess I would have said ‘Green’, ‘Cold’ and ‘Dour’. Yet again, as throughout Northern Ireland, I am wrong on at least two counts. My experience of Co Antrim (the town is too far inland for this trip, but my guests tell me the rail and airport connections are exemplary) is that it is indeed very green and also as a result very beautiful, but far from being full of people made dour by the cold it is packed with jolly suntanned people in shorts eating ice creams and fish and chips and frolicking on sandy beaches. I am assured by the locals that it is always like this, and that the coincidence of an uneasonal heatwave and half term are merely, well, a coincidence. I want to believe them as it is really very enjoyable.

The weather is not a coincidence, it’s the answer to a few months’ fervent prayer, Sarah having agreed to join me for a few days in Half Term and, as any reader will know, sailing is not high on her list of Half Term actvities. Or indeed any list at all. Lucky for her then that we had two days of motoring in a near calm, admiring the green coastline (full disclosure, the best bit was hidden in some annoying mist, the one day it wasn’t dawn to dusk sunshine). We’d enjoyed the Titantic museum (sorry, Experience) and strolling around Belfast but on Bank Holiday Monday most of it was closed, and what wasn’t (mainly the pubs) were full of those loud Irish-descent-claiming Americans. So arriving in Glenarm was a delight – a tiny village which was billed as having nothing at all for the visitor except two pubs with no food. This bit was the case, but what the guides had failed to mention was the supposedly famous castle with its walled garden, award-winning tea room, local produce shop, pizza barn and dairy. Sadly, finding this information late in the day, we arrived just as all of the above were closing, not because it was a Bank Holiday but because we are in Antrim and it is 5pm. Luckily we came pre-provisioned, unlike the Canadians in the huge yacht who were loudly appalled by the lack of restaurants. They must have long-range Canadian pilot books.

Glenarm is the first of the Antrim Glens, another Antrim feature of which I was blissfully unaware. I still mainly am, since they mostly hid in the mist, but based on Glenarm you could imagine they were pretty decent. The sun came out to round Fair Head where we entered the frankly terrifying Raithlin Sound – another of these tidal squeezes where the currents are so complex that the tide atlas gives up for hours at a time and simply says ‘not defined’, leaving you to guess. We seem to have guessed OK and ended up in Ballycastle which is as far from terrifying as you can get, unless you have a phobia of sandy beaches, ice cream or fish and chips, in which case keep well away. It also has more buses than the average seaside town, which was handy since Owen joined us from the airport (sadly without Josy, who has done her back in) for a very curtailed week, which was even more curtailed by the lack of wind, ridiculously strong tides and the way buses around here seem to take a three hour lunch break.

After a day or two we knew the bus drivers quite well, as they took us to the Giant’s Causeway and back twice as well as ferrying Owen and Sarah to the train station in Coleraine. First Causeway visit was as expected but smaller: I had been expecting hunks of basalt big enough for a giant but I reckon he wore around size 13. His chair was equally un-giant-sized:

Although I did enjoy fooling around with his organ:

I was encouraged to write this sort of schoolboy thing not only by Sarah but by one of the guides who was supposed to be surveying basalt columns. More Finbar Saunders than Finn McCool.

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We quite fancied sailing to Raithlin Island where there is a bird sanctuary and a restaurant to please the most demanding Canadian, but a glance at the tide atlas suggested that walking 100 yards to the fast ferry was the quicker and safer bet. This was time and money very well spent: a jolly islander drove us to the lighthouse in the Puffin Bus where jolly RSPB volunteers showed us where to see real actual live in-the-feather puffins. Hurrah, another box ticked. They don’t photograph too well on a standard phone so luckily they had an idiot’s guide which allows me to tell you that the birds I have seen which aren’t seagulls are variously Razorbills, Fulmars and Guillemots. I had guessed but now I know which is which.

This was sadly the end of Half Term for Sarah who caught a bus going in a different direction but somehow ended up in the right place. It did give Owen and me the chance to do some things Sarah prefers to avoid: walking long distances on cliff tops, drinking Guinness while talking to strangers in pubs, eating fish and chips and sailing.

Owen drove, flew, trained and bussed about ten hours each way for a three hour sail. I thought it only fair to let him do the steering, even though it involved me hoisting and dropping two spinnakers and navigating through the scary rocks with one of them up.

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