Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

From glen to glen and down the mountainside

The summer’s gone and all the flowers are dying

‘Tis you, it’s you must go, and I must bide – The Irish Brigade

Woolly says – We had crossed the border from Ireland into Northern Ireland just as the sun started to shine and just in time for check in for our overnight digs.

Northern Ireland is a part of the United it has been described as a country, province or region. The government of Northern Ireland cooperates with the government of Ireland in several areas under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Northern Ireland was created in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, creating a devolved government for the six northeastern counties. As was intended by unionists and their supporters in Westminster, Northern Ireland had a unionist majority, who wanted to remain in the United Kingdom.

The creation of Northern Ireland was marred by violence between those for and against partition. During The Troubles in Ulster (1920 to 1922), the capital Belfast saw major communal violence, mainly between Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist civilians. More than 500 were killed and more than 10,000 became refugees, mostly Catholics. In the late 1960s, a campaign to end discrimination against Catholics and nationalists was opposed by loyalists, who saw it as a republican front. This unrest sparked the Troubles, a thirty year conflict involving republican and loyalist paramilitaries and state forces, which claimed over 3,500 lives and injured 50,000 others. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement was a major step in the peace process, including paramilitary disarmament and security normalisation, although sectarianism and segregation remain major social problems, and sporadic violence has continued.

Northern Ireland is a strange one for me having grown up in an era when the troubles were in the news and on the front pages of the newspapers everyday with the IRA was predominant and places like Londonderry, Belfast and Ulster mentioned all the time. On 21st November 1974, bombs exploded in two pubs in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people and injuring 182 others. This was a mere nine miles from where we lived at the time which brought it very close to home. The Provisional IRA never officially admitted responsibility for the bombings, although a former senior officer of the organisation confessed to their involvement in 2014. I was therefore really excited to visit a place that had gone through so much.

Woolly says – We woke to a lovely sunny day, sadly the same could not be said of the women, Jo said she was feeling a bit better but still ached from head to toe and had a mushy head but Zoe had now also caught the lurgy and was not in a good state of repair. Having dosed them both up and gently pushed them out of the door I realised that I might have to amend our days activities so that they didn’t collapse on my altogether, I could ponder that as we headed to our first port of call.

Derry, officially Londonderry, is a cathedral city covering both banks of the River Foyle. Cityside and the old walled city are on the west bank, and Waterside is on the east, with two road bridges and one footbridge crossing the river in between.

The second-largest city in Northern Ireland after Belfast. The person traditionally seen as the founder of the original Derry is Saint Colmcille, a holy man from Tír Chonaill, the old name for almost all of modern County Donegal, of which the west bank of the Foyle was part before 1610. It is also home to a number of famous people including, Amanda Burton (born 1956), actress, Nadine Coyle (born 1985), singer, Dana (born 1950), singer and politician, Feargal Sharkey (born 1958), lead singer of The Undertones.

We wandered through the streets arriving at the Museum of Free Derry that focuses on the civil rights movement of the late 1960s, which led to The Troubles, and the Free Derry Irish nationalist movement in the early 1970s. Located in the Bogside district, the museum’s exhibits include photographs, posters, film footage, letters and personal artifacts.

We sat watching a short video that gave us some insight to the troubles before starting to look at the troubles in more details through photographs and items that had been used by the people, the police and army at the time.

The photographs were harrowing as it took us through the events leading up to Bloody Sunday which had marked the start of the end of the situation on the city.

One letter made us all tearful as it held no regrets and even laughed at the deaths that had been caused, we felt terrible that our country of birth had done this to other humans.

Some of the exhibits contained bloody and bullet torn clothes worn by those that had been killed, it was too much to take pictures of.

Perhaps even more harrowing was the last couple of displays which detailed the inquiries into what had happened, the first inquiry had found that the British Army was not at fault for anything. Luckily a second inquiry which took until 2010 to complete found that those killed on that awful day were in fact innocent. Way to late and way too long in reaching that conclusion, it was striking that one army officer (lower rank) was pretty much blamed for everything and no senior officers were held accountable.

We headed outside unable to talk and stood looking at the front of the museum where 17 men had been shot on Bloody Sunday.

We then took to the streets of Bogside which now looked like any normal residential area within a city, to look at the murals that were everywhere.

The famous murals of Derry are primarily located in the Bogside neighbourhood and form a historic visual record known as “The People’s Gallery”.  A trio of local muralists, brothers Tom and William Kelly, along with Kevin Hasson painted a series of large gable-wall artwork depicting key events from the Troubles.

 Some based on the Civil rights, some for the innocent who had died, including memorials to them all.

One of the most famous walls remained which is where the words ‘You are now entering Free Derry’ that had stood through the years of conflict.

Other memorials for the prisoners that had gone on hunger strike including a name that I remembered well, Bobby Sands.

We headed further into the city stopping at a chemist to top up on medication for the humans who stood outside the shop throwing down tablets before sucking on throat sweets. I had decided to leave one the museums off our list and just try and get them round some of the main sites instead.

The first of these was the beautiful Guildhall with its glorious sandy looking exterior. The Guildhall is the place in which the elected members of Derry City and Strabane District Council meet.  A Grade A listed building, the current building was preceded by an earlier town hall called the Market House which was built in the 17th century and destroyed in the Siege of Derry in 1689. The current building, which was designed by John Guy Ferguson was completed in 1890. The design for the clock tower was modelled on the Elizabeth Tower in London.

During The Troubles, the Guildhall was the focus of multiple terror attacks. The building was badly damaged by two bombs in 1972 but was restored at a cost of £1.7 million and reopened in 1977.

Inside we were greeted by a large marble statue of Queen Victoria, before my eyes turned to the most stunning stained glass windows, not only stunning but loads of them to admire. We entered an exhibition room which gave us information on the city and the British Kings and Queens who had had input into it, sadly no pictures were allowed in this section.

Climbing up a set of stairs we entered a huge function room with even more stained glass to admire and the prettiest organ we had seen painted in a most fetching shade of blue.

Just outside of the room was a display case containing John Hume’s Nobel Peace Prize. John Hume (18th January 1937 to 3rd August 2020) was an Irish nationalist politician in Northern Ireland and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. A founder and leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Hume served in the Parliament of Northern Ireland; the Northern Ireland Assembly including, in 1974, its first power-sharing executive; the European Parliament and the United Kingdom Parliament. Seeking an accommodation between Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism, and soliciting American support, he was both critical of British government policy in Northern Ireland and opposed to the republican embrace of “armed struggle”. In their 1998 citation, the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognised Hume as an architect of the Good Friday Agreement

We took a quick peek into the people’s assembly room before heading back outside. To take a look at the city walls which were very easy to find as they surrounded the place, I had planned for us to walk the whole length of them but I could see that that wasn’t an option so made the most of stepping onto them and enjoying the view and especially the large cannons.

Derry’s walls, also known as the Walls of Derry, were originally built by the Irish Society between 1613 and 1619, under the supervision of the London builder and architect Peter Benson. They were built with the intention of protecting the Scottish and English planters that had moved to Ulster as part of the Plantation of Ulster that had been established by James I. It was a direct consequence of the previous settlement being destroyed by Irish chieftain Cahir O’Doherty during O’Doherty’s rebellion. As a result of the building of the city’s defences by the Irish Society, which was a consortium of livery companies based out of the City of London, the city was officially renamed Londonderry in the 1613 royal charter. This is what has subsequently led to the naming dispute for the city and county of Derry/Londonderry.

The were great and far from flat as every fifty meters or so the rose for the bridge coming through them.

Luckily our next destination was only a few feet away and promised a wealth of history of the city, The Tower Museum opened in 1992 in the presence of Ian Paisley and John Hume and was considered by the Northern Ireland Office to be a flagship project to promote tourism. The local press deemed it as “magnificent”.

We had to beg to differ as all it had on show was related to the television series Derry Girls, including parts of the sets and pictures of them. We had actually been watching the show as we travelled so at least, we had a clue was it was about, but I was really gutted that there was not a speck of history to be found.

As we left the tower the women were flagging we did however have one more place to go that we could not miss, having got Zoe to check google maps we found it was a mere five minute walk and being the brave soldiers that they were we set off slowly pausing several times for them to rest which did allow me to admire more of the city walls including a fetching mural of the Undertones.

It actually took us ten minutes to get to the Bishops Gate Hotel, but I knew it would be worth it. Jo and my lovely bosses, Rich and Claudia, had gifted us a voucher for the Wig and Gown restaurant to enjoy during our time in the city, which had touched us both.

The menu was lovely and having some mocktails (I thought it best not to allow the women to add alcohol to the mix of cold and flu medicines) we ordered, I was delighted with my prawn and Donegal smoked salmon bagel and although I couldn’t finish it the staff were more than happy to provide a doggy box to take it away, we also opted for some desserts to take with us.

Just as we arrived back at the car park we found The Peace Flame, being Ireland’s only eternal peace flame. Unveiled in May 2013 during Derry’s tenure as the UK City of Culture as part of the “Bright, Brand New Day” peace initiative.  Officially lit by Martin Luther King III and local clergy, with the flame itself ignited by children from both Catholic and Protestant it serves as a symbol of hope, reconciliation, and the post-Troubles era. One of only 15 such peace flames worldwide.

With the humans now in need of finishing the day we climbed into the car and set off for our second nights’ accommodation just over an hour away.