Journey Into Norn Iron

I’m back in the saddle again, after months out of action. Yesterday I cycled up the canal towpath beside Moneypenny’s Lock. The sun was shining, it was warm and I didn’t know what a colourful journey was ahead of me. Entering Portadown, a group of men were blocking the towpath. They had large bottles of strong cider in Tesco carrier bags. Just my luck, I thought, alkies causing trouble again. I rang my bell to warn them of my approach. One of them turned and sang. “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley. Ding, ding, ding went the bell.”  And laughing, they let me pass. Blimey, serenaded by alcoholics, with a tune made famous by Judy Garland in ‘Meet Me in St Louis’.

The end of the towpath is at Town Quay, where a paddle steamer once took passengers across Lough Neagh. Here I joined the Garvaghy Road, the most politicised street in NI and a reputed hotbed of Irish nationalism. But today the houses and the people were bedecked in orange. The colour of the other side. What was going on? Ironic performance art on a grand scale? No. They were supporting the Armagh Gaelic Football team, playing today in the All Ireland Final. I turned onto Ashgrove Road and headed out into open country. On top of the first hill stood the tall pointed spire of the Church of Ireland, Drumcree. The site of large-scale riots 30 years ago over the route of an Orange Order parade. In the oppositional logic of NI, surely this should today be bedecked in maroon and white. The colours of Galway, the opponents of Armagh in the final. But no, the Orange Order had instead applied to march down the Garvaghy Road today. To avoid another riot, permission was refused.

I carried on past dairy farms around the margins of Lough Neagh. The slurry that is spread on these fields is the source of the blue-green algae that blights the water of the UK’s largest lake. Given that it is also the source of 40 % of the drinking water of NI, you’d think people would take more care. Or at least the NI Environment Agency would enforce the rules on slurry spreading and runoff. At Maghery there is a footbridge over the mouth of the River Blackwater that takes you into Tyrone. In the middle of the bridge is a sign. ‘Danger. Do Not Jump From Bridge.’ Beside it stood a group of lads in swimming trunks, daring one another to leap the twenty feet into the dark water below.