Sunny Monday, Bloody Sunday

I suspect sunburn is not a big thing in Derry, nor is a visiting yacht judging by my experience so far. It’s been 24 degrees and unlike elsewhere in NI, rather than going to the beach (which is huge and beautiful but 15 miles away) and eating arwarding-winning ice creams (only one outlet in NI’s second city) people are mainly wandering around looking confused and remarking on the weather to complete strangers.

Getting here was entertaining. The crews of the five yachts inside me at Greencastle all arrived at once and asked me to move as they were going racing. No problem: they were very friendly and one of them worked in the Port and called his friend to check they were expecting me at the marina in Derry. When I said I had planned to go to a quiet bay and anchor they suggested one about ten minutes down-tide so off I went to a stunning little inlet I would never have considered, with rocks all around but two great beaches and the occasional golfer. Not a bad place to build my anchor-in-the-rocks-without-a-chart confidence, especially when I paddleboarded over to a particularly nasty looking patch that I was worried about swinging near to and discovered it was kelp.

A scrub of the waterline and a lot of lazing about in the sunshine later and the tide turned, the sea breeze filled in and I sailed the 18 miles from the mouth of Lough Foyle to Derry city. I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to do this and I rather think most people don’t; I got a few odd stares and a thumbs up from a RIB as I sailed under the Foyle Bridge. Halfway up the Lough the radio had burst into life. A ship was calling the Port Control: “We’re ready to leave now,” he said, “but there’s a yacht coming up the channel. It seems to be called Blue Moon?” Luckily my friend in Greencastle had played his trump card. His friend in Port Control replied with a laconic ‘”Yes, that’s right.” Not reassured, the coaster called me next. “Blue Moon, I am coming down the channel. Red to red?” This is proper sea-speak for ‘shall we obey the rules of the road and each of us stick to the starboard side of the channel?’ I have never been asked this by a 150-foot coaster, and I have no idea what he was thinking of except that he had never seen a yacht before. The channel is indeed very narrow but well marked and Blue Moon is only three metres wide so with great skill and seamanship I managed to keep to my side of the channel as he passed. I gave him a cheery wave but he must have been gripping his wheel too hard to wave back.

And so I ended up tied onto a ramshackle pontoon (a marina in name only) but bang in the middle of Derry (you can call it Londonderry if you want but it takes longer to type and seems less acceptable) in searing heat while people in shorts wandered around talking about the heat. It was sunbathing hot until past 9pm, as I discovered when I looked down and saw the colour I had gone.

Dartmouth? La Rochelle? No, Derry

Monday morning dawned bluer and hotter still. Blazing heat as I did a major Sainsbury’s shop (hurrah, first Sainsbury’s since Swansea, and there’s a rock and roll song title for you), various boat jobs including the kind of washing the decks when it’s good news when the hose bursts and soaks you. So I was wearing my best surf shirt and shorts by the time I set out for a bit of sightseeing before meeting Andrew off the Belfast Airport Express bus. I’d promised to save the walk around the city walls for him (one of Europe’s most complete, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site didn’t you know) so it was a deep breath and – having avoided the Troubles Tours of Belfast – it was off to the Museum of Free Derry.

Complete shock. From sun-drenched modern waterside Derry it was three or four blocks up and then down hill to the Bogside. The first building I encountered was the IRA Volunteers Welfare Association with the welcoming slogan ‘The Revolution Continues’, the mural above giving no doubt that the revolution is armed and wears balaclavas. And then the eeriest feeling as across the baking street was a sickeningly familiar block of flats: I was walking in 24 degrees technicolour through a scene I recognised from black and white, because the museum is slap bang on the spot where on 30th January 1972 14 people we now know to be completely innocent and unarmed were shot by the British Army, and I was walking through it in my best surf shirt and shorts, on holiday. People still live in the flats in which some of the victims lived and outside which they died, many trying to flee or to help the injured. I have rarely felt so consipucously out of place or so unsettled. I actually considered turning round before someone spotted I was English because of my stupid, irreverent clothes.

I’m glad I didn’t. The staff at the museum gave me a warm welcome in spite of my accent, and showed me around what is less of a museum and more of a walk through the background to Bloody Sunday, from the Plantations of Ulster to the Apprentice Boys and the Catholic disnefranchisement, to the inspiration of Martin Luther King and the US Civil RIghts Movement, to the Battle of the Bogside and the way the British Army turned from defenders to oppressors and eventually, it was made completely clear, murderers. It was one of the most revealing and moving hours I can recall. It ends with David Cameron’s apology and although there is footage of the cheering crowds in Derry watching on a big screen, I couldn’t get past the faces of the dead brothers and sisters of the campaigners who had fought for 38 years to clear the names of their loved ones. The museum closed and the volunteer thanked me for coming in an accent that felt terribly familiar.

Just then Andrew phoned; his bus had arrived early and I was jolted back to 2023. We walked the walls and I explained about the museum. We looked down at the Bogside Murals and the Union Jacks on the other side of the wall, and decided not to go back down.

We managed to find a pub which didn’t have a tricolour flying outside it for a quick pint, but although the lad behind the bar was as friendly as any of his countrymen it didn’t feel right, so we went back to the boat for supper. For the first time I considered taking my Blue Ensign down, not so much from self-preservation as from shame.