Monday July 14, 2014

Rain on the tent, what a way to wake up.  We stayed snuggled under our sleeping bags for a while until it stopped.  We were up at 7:00 and managed to get the tent down before it started to rain again.  We ate our breakfast in the foyer of the marina building and eventually set of at 10:15, very late start. We had about 60ks to go and decided it would be a head down and pedal kind of day.  It rained for the majority of the ride and only stopped as we came into Belfast.

It was an interesting day for me cycling through places that I had heard about during the troubles – Antrim.   As we came into Belfast we cycled down the Crumlin Road.  It still looks like a ‘war zone’ even though the fences are down.  It was a very uncomfortable feeling as we cycled through, we didn\’t want to stop in this area, particularly as it is only a few days after the July 12 festivities.

In Antrim, Ralf and I had a discussion about the route, we knew we had to take the A26.  The only signed route was the A26 to Ballymena, back the way we had come from.  I told him, we would be going in the wrong direction.  Eventually after 2 roundabouts we found the A26 bound for Nutts Corner and Belfast.  I am not sure why Ralf thinks it is a good idea to follow the wrong road, for example it would be like being in Toronto seeing the 401 sign directing you towards Montreal (east) when you want to go to Windsor (west) and following the 401 sign to Montreal.

As we climbed the last hill before descending down into Belfast a road cyclist joined us and chatted to us about the hill and the weight we are carrying.  He told us that at the top of the hill we would get a great view of Belfast.  Judge for yourself – it was raining.

We had lunch in Belfast and headed to our warmshowers host.  Belfast has quite a nice looking downtown which we will explore in greater detail tomorrow.

Sam is a really nice man, he works at the British Geological Society and has a phd as a glacieologist.  The Tour de France was on the tv as we arrived, so we were able to catch up as Alberto Contador, retired from the race after his fall.

We went out for a pub dinner, first pint of Guinness in Ireland, lovely.  An early night.