Wednesday July 16, 2014

We said our farewells to Sam at about 8:45 and set out on the river/canal route to Lisburn.  Due to the nature of a river they do not generally run in a straight line consequently our route was a meandering route.  The 22 kms took us rather a long time with a stop for a chat it was almost 2 hours, but it was very nice, paved all the way and plenty of room for cyclists and pedestrians.

We passed a huge derelict building.

A lovely couple of ladies were walking towards us so we decided to stop and ask them what the building had been used for.  It was the largest Irish Linen Mill, it employed thousands of workers in its day.  Hilden Mill owned by Barbour Threads was built in 1784 and by 1914 employed 2,000 people, it was the largest linen thread company in the world.  It closed in 2006.  The ladies told us that the Queen’s wedding gift was made there.

We met our first grumpy Irish couple.  We passed them on one stretch of the river, I rang my bell which has quite a nice ring to it not harsh ring, just a gentle – excuse me I am coming up behind you kind of ring.  They didn’t move to one side, so I rang it again and called coming up on your right.  They turned around and glared at us, I smiled and said good-morning but they were not happy.  Now the unfortunate thing happened, we got turned around and did an extra loop which meant that we passed them two more times.  Each time I rang my happy bell, and each time they glared at us.  It was a shared path, but I guess they didn’t want to share.

After we left Lisburn we had a lovely ride through Hillsborough into Newcastle.  What a surprise Newcastle was.  It was a very busy seaside tourist Town with lots of people and cars milling around.

We went to the Tourist Information Office who told us about two campsites.  The one for us was called Wheelmore Park, it took tents, the other park was for families only.  The lady at the Information office told us it was about 10 minutes away.  Ralf said we are on bicycles, yep only 10 minutes.

We cycled to the Tesco to buy dinner and while Ralf was in the store I chatted to Shelia who was a transplant from Stoke, loves Ireland, offered us her spare room if we couldn’t find a campsite.  I wasn’t that keen as she smoked rollups and had two in the short time that I spoke to her.  Her directions to the campsite were a little different from the Tourist Information Office.

We set off on our 10 minute ride to the campsite.  Twenty minutes and a couple of hills later we arrived at Tollymore Forest Park – the families only park.

We decided to chance it and cycled into the park.  Yes we could stay, by this time it was getting on to 5:00 pm and we quickly set up the tent and made dinner.

As we were finishing dinner we chatted to our neighbour, a fellow cyclist.  I had noticed a road bike and thought it might be his son’s.  He was very enthusiastic about his morning rides.  We laughed about ‘chasing’ down other riders and ‘racing’ with them.  He also told us about the Irish 10 minutes – everything is 10 minutes away or just around the corner. You have to ask how far the corner is before you decide to head out, because the corner may be 10 kms away!