The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter Fifteen. Donaghadee.

 Donaghadee

Pearl of the Ards Peninsula

Long long before Belfast became a city...before Samson and Goliath, the giants of Harland and Wolff's cranes towered over the houses in that city, Donaghadee was the main port on the east coast of Ulster carrying out business with the ports of Scotland and England. It is the closest point to Scotland and was the landing place for the Ulster Scots who settled in the north of Ireland travelling from Port Patrick in Wigtonshire. 

My paternal family left the Scottish borderlands in the mid 17thc to eventually settle in County Armagh, and my storytelling mind has left me imagining that they may have landed at the old harbour in Donaghadee. I like that thought! The sea route between Larne and Stranraer came much later.

Our route from the caravan to the Dee, as we all called the town, took us past the little shop at Ballywhisken, and on through Millisle and the icecream vendor's place where a filled ice cream cone could be dipped into melting chocolate. What a joy! Dad often stopped  and treated us as a start to our holidays.

And so on to the town of Donaghadee.

In the early 50s, before dad bought the old black Austin that later took us to the caravan at Ballyferris...kitchen sink...grandfather clock... et al... we were often thankful for a lift to Donaghadee from Wully Hope. If I remember correctly he too had an Austin, but this was a little two door version. How we all fitted in can only be imagined. Dad in the front with Mr. Hope, mum in the back with Rosie still a baby, on her knee and Ian and myself squashed in as best we could.  Ian was by then at least 13 years old so no skinny kid! I was only eight or nine. Of course there were no safety car belts in those days...so perhaps that made it easier to fit us all in. 

Once parked,  the first thing to do was to take a walk down the harbour to the lighthouse. Stop at the deep end, gaze out to sea to the Copeland Islands and then walk around it and back into the town. We still do that every time we visit. It feels right and you just never know who you might meet.

 The next best place to go was always The Cabin icecream parlour and cafe. 

Up the little wooden stairs we would trundle and find a table big enough to take all five of the McClellands. Then a young local girl dressed in traditional cafe, black dress with white pinny would arrive to write down our order. Dad would josh...joke...with her and she would blush as she wrote down our desires for tea and cake and usually an ice cream in a glass bowl for each of us. And if there were any other tables occupied there might be a bit of chat and banter from dad ....much to my embarassment....me wanting to appear sophisticated even then and pretend that this was normal and not as dad said "a special treat".

I doubt that the tables and chairs have changed in any way over the 60 years and more since we went to eat at The Cabin....this photograph was taken recently and they are still just as I remember them. Wonderful! 

Below is a glass cabinet in the cafe with momentoes and memories of the years that the Cabin has been serving the people of the Dee.

...and on the wall are these three historic photographs of some RNLI men who volunteered for service on the Donaghadee lifeboat.

The seas at this part of the coast are known to be very dangerous. On the 31st January 1953 the MV Princess Victoria sank in a fierce storm. We were already caravanning at Ballyferris and even though I was young the sinking stayed in my memory and worried me when from time to time I took the Liverpool Boat back home to Belfast to visit family. Again in the early days of the caravan, when we were all sitting in the early afternoon, mum remarked that the little fishing boat in our view had disappeared. The men on it had gone down immediately...the story is that they never learnt to swim and always wore heavy rubber boots... theory being best to go down quickly... and even though the rescuers came as fast as they possibly could...no remains were ever found as far as I know. A lifeboat station was set up in 1910 and as with all RNLI boats local people manage it as volunteers.

We grew up and made it to the town ourselves often hitching rides or managing to get a lift from the older members of the caravanners. Derek Cathcart or maybe June McKee. With a newspaper steaming with the treat of delicious chips...seldom could I afford fish as well...or an icecream poke...yes that's what a cone gets called in Ireland!...we sat on the wall together or lounged in the amusement arcade where we offered our pennies into the one-arm bandits. Noone asked our ages...and anyway there were maybe only a few machines in the small room opposite the wall. June was an adult by then and had made friends with the lads who owned the fishing boat called "The Brothers". So if business was a bit quiet with them, then for a small nominal amount, as we knew June, we got to go out mackerel fishing by the Copeland Islands. I tried to be brave if I managed to catch a fish but I was always thankful for the fishermen who helped me to take the squirming fish off the hook. Mum refused to accept my catch when I proudly brought it back to her as she scoffed at mackerel telling me they were the bins of the ocean and who knows what they had eaten. I'm very fond of a mackerel now though I have recently read that they too are becoming scarce.

This is the boat called "The Brothers" still to be seen in the harbour.You know how things can seem enormous when you are young...like the size of your bedroom..or the back garden at home...well that is how I thought of the boat called "The Brothers". I thought it was really big! Once when Rosie and me were in the Dee alone we decided to go out on a trip in it and land on one of the Copeland islands. Being adventurous we set off to walk the whole shore around it. It was a special site for terns that we chose and it happened to be the prime breeding time. As we walked we started to be attacked by the worried birds. We ran for the safe shore and made it to the boat unharmed ...apart from our pride. Terns are also now on the decrease..whether or not on the Copelands I'm not sure. There is a story that Dean Swift who wrote Gulliver's Travels took the idea for the islands from the Copelands. It may be so as he lived locally and took the hill outside Belfast we called Napoleon's Head as the thought behind his giant. And mum used the Lilliput Laundry in Belfast which was on Lilliput Street....not named after Swift's book! 

 

Finally...The Warren..a rabbity land south of the main town which was another wonderful place to walk where there were swings and pitch and putt and benches to sit and do nothing more but dream ...

..and on the way there maybe stop and buy a bag of dulse from the garden behind the whitewashed wall with the red gates and the notice..."Dulse for sale." Hard to believe now that a bag of dulse....seaweed found all the way along the coast and dried in the sun...could be thought of as a treat when you were only eight years of age in the 1950s. But I still keep a bag of it in my food cupboard..very tasty fried for a minute or two in some butter.

 I was reminded recently that the little end cottage to the left of the lane leading down to the beach was lived in by a local man who collected dulse each morning at low tide and dried it in the yard at the back of the cottage, and then bagged it up to be sold in the town. ...memories.

...oh!...that could be the potter on that swing...early days at Donaghadee.

The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter Thirteen. Some Dad-type Incidents.

Me ...Dad ...and Rosie

 This chapter is a story about dad and it could only be told after he had passed on. It's hard to believe that he died nearly forty years ago, because my memories of him are so clear...though that may be because I am  now close to the age he was when he went! 

In our hidden garden, here at The Potters House in Penketh, every autumn we are amazed at the variety of fungi that crops up under the birch grove and the grassy paths of the labyrinth. Mushroom and fungi are everywhere. I'm astounded at the size of some of them for those in around the labyrinth are the most beautiful, tiny little orangey-red ones.

 I've looked in my fungi book in the summer house, but it's hard to know exactly what we have. So I just warn the grand children to look but not touch. Nowadays fungi is one of the most talked about subjects within the scientific world. Centres such as Kew are publishing reports of how it is a basic provider of environmental health on the earth's surface and I read about the link between fungi and trees in Merlin Sheldrake's book.."Entangled Lives"..well worth a visit!  But in the 50s I thought that the mushrooms which came with my Ulster fry were from a farm somewhere in the country. So it was with great anticipation that I was allowed to go with dad very early one summer morning, leave the caravan field and go up the lane and on to Greystone Road the one that led to Carrowdore...you remember Carrowdore? Once there to enter the best field where fresh mushrooms were to be found and take them back to mum for the breakfast she was cooking. 

Some of the fungi to be found here at The Potters House.

What child living in a city in the 50s knew that the best field mushrooms were to be found where the biggest cow claps were! Not me.  Big white umbrella like fungi that grew on the edges of  brown claps where dad and I picked enough to feed the family for breakfast that morning. I have really never since had such a wonderful taste as those freshly picked that day still with the early morning dew shining on their tops. And when they were fried in the pan with foaming butter and us all seated around the little table and the sound of the sea and the smell of the wild flowers in the long grass... well that was heaven. 

But this story of dad and Cassie and her field is a good one and all the better for a comment I received recently from someone who discovered me on my blog and was also in Ballyferris with her family at the same time as us. We always seemed to eat well at the caravan. Maybe it was the fresh air, maybe it was the smell of the calor gas stove or maybe it was because after a day roaming the beaches, we were just plain ravenous.  So as I have written, I learnt from dad that the best place to look for mushrooms was around the periphery of old cow pats! I suppose you could say that they were very well manured. As I have already said the difference in the taste of a freshly picked field mushroom and a lily white button one salvaged from the ravages of some supermarket shelf cannot be described with mere words. I would need you to smell and taste these plump, snowy morsels after they had been gently marinaded in hot butter by mum and arranged on toast... also dripping with butter... and placed on the caravan table sometime around eight in the morning, just after a successful search. The best field to find these jewels of the morning were always at Cassie’s farm. Cassie was an old woman living alone in her farm up on the right of the Greystone Road looking away from Hope's property. As kids we used to climb on the back of Wully Hope's tractor and cling on for dear life as one of the Hope boys drove at breakneck speed up the narrow road to Cassie’s to work in the potato fields gathering the harvest. In my memories this was normally Neil, the younger of the two sons, who allowed us on to the back of the tractor. Can you imagine this happening today? Of course it was a bit dangerous, but in all the years that I did it, I knew of no accidents. That’s not to say that there were none but I never heard of them. Cassie’s farmyard was a lot smaller the Hope’s. but just as exciting for us townies. I can't imagine now that I did very much gathering for the potato harvest, but to be with the others and the joshing and joking that went on was just such a wonderful memory.

 "The Quaint Couple" by Charles Vincent Lamb. 1893-1964

There is a great family story concerning dad and Cassie. One early morning he went out alone to pick some mushrooms. He was wandering about in one of her fields scanning the ground for fresh white goodies by the cow pats, when a voice cried out to him in a lovely Co. Down accent,

 “ I think you’ve strayed!”

He looked up and noticed an elderly farming woman approaching him pointing a loaded shotgun in his direction. But being the charmer that he was, he gave a chuckle and agreed. " I think I have!" However Cassie was having none of it, and dad had to carefully retreat back out of the gate and off down the Greystone Road. Dougie's charm was not enough that morning to calm the situation. Alas, that was the last time we ever gathered mushrooms there for our seaside breakfasts. 

Cassie had every right to defend her land. A woman living alone out in the country needed to know how to protect herself. Then again, maybe that’s why she was alone! I’ll never know. Moments like this are there to be savoured and remembered in the difficult times that all of us encounter in life. All I know is that she was highly esteemed by the Hope family and that's enough for me.

Fly Agaric under the birch grove in the hidden garden.

I believe them to be magic mushrooms....but I've not tried them so I have nothing to report!!

The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter 3... The Road

Chapter Three

The Road Taken

                               
Journeys nowadays are speedy affairs... well that is if the traffic isn’t too jammed up... or the road works aren’t bringing us all down to one lane . But in these days that I write about, there were no bypasses or dual carriageways, so every trip was a major undertaking.
Which of course made it all the more exciting.

There was one special road that led to Newtownards. We called it, “The Switchback”.
It had no bends in it at all ... it was simply a dead straight road going up and down and over the hills. .The alternative road...the wider road was more regular, and thus deemed boring. So the cry went up from the kids on the back seat, “Dad, please take the hilly route!”.
As far as I can remember nobody was car-sick, but that may be because I didn’t want to admit to such feelings. Hauling your stomach back inside you as the car bounced over the top of the hills time after time, with Ian shouting “faster, faster dad!”, meant that I couldn’t let myself down by admitting to nausea.
Through Newtownards and the road edged along Strangford Lough, eventually turning left towards the village of Carrowdore. Isn’t it odd the feelings you get on some roads? It seemed to me that it was out in the wilds and had a wild west deserted look to it. Thinking back, farming wasn’t the pretty, crafty place that a lot of it seems in the fashionable magazines today...and the people were possibly poor cottage farmers....I'm not sure. Or maybe it’s just another example of my insatiable imagination!
 Right turn at the end of the village and we’re almost at the field, the farm, the caravan,
                                                             
                                                                     Ballyferris.

. Ah! Ballyferris! What magic is conjured up even at the mention of the name. As we come over the last hill the competition is on to be the first to shout out...“I see the sea”. ?
 I really, really want it to be me. …but usually it was my big brother Ian, Iupy ...the son‘n’heir.
Now and again we journeyed down by a different road, driving past the old windmill at Millisle, before turning right to join the coast road again. That was always a great route because dad really loved icecream, and there was a wonderful shop in Millisle selling cream ice in a poke (that’s a cone to you!) ...which was then dipped into melted chocolate and the joy as you crunched through the hard shell of the chocolate made a memory never to be forgotten.. So we were happy bunnies when we reached the field...........

 

..if also rather sick!

Sunday's Short Story...Writer's group prompt.

Vicky said we should see how many times we could sing, "Rock around the clock". It was the end of the 1950s and we were in the domestic science rooms at school in Belfast.

There's a thought. Domestic.....were they planning that we should only end up as housewives?

Was learning to wash lettuce and make porridge really a science that our mothers hadn't already invited us to participate in?

My mother had regularly invited me into the kitchen for one science or another.  Washing up was well on it's way to a degree, if not an MSc by the time Vicky suggested this latest idea.

Elvis was hot news in 1956. Not that he or his music were played in my home nor I suspected...Vicky's.

Ungodly I think would have been the comment from my brother... older than me.

Anyway, I don't think I could have wound up my parent's gramaphone fast enough to keep a record playing long enough to be able to dance....that is gyrate...to the end of the song.

Can you remember the words?...one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock...oh you remember.

I was nervous. It was always difficult to say no to Vicky.

She wasn't exactly a bully, but let's just say extremely persuasive.  And I wanted to stay in with her as she also led the little gang of teenagers who gathered on the beach near where we both had family caravans.

Oh my...there's another tale to be told. The caravan.

Anyway I seccumbed to her hissing persuasion and chanted "Rock around the clock" quietly under my breath. My hesitancy was not only fear of being heard in the class...but also because I had already been in trouble with the headmistress.

Looking back now it seems ridiculous, but the wrong v-necked sweater from the wrong shop, the tilt of a beret on the back of the head rather than pulled well over the ears, or the length of hair touching the collar of the blazer, could get you hauled into her office for another lecture on "Unacceptable uniform".

I 've forgotten how many times we sang though Elvis's rock anthem. I would think Vicky with her uncanny ability to miss out on the lash of "miss's" whip like tongue, kept going the whole hour of the lesson. Then the bell would have brought me blessed relief.

The hour is imprinted deep in my memory bank. A bank that seems to have deposited some memories deep in a vault slammed the door and gone and lost the key.

Elvis's music and his Lemur-like hip gyrations were a turning point for a whole generation that was moving rapidly away from all the deprivations that period of our history brought with it.

And as the alternative in Ireland was either "Diddley da" music or Irish style country and western with those singing... slurring over both the words and melodies...Elvis and all that followed were a breath of fresh air.

A Poem for Thursday.

A Poem for Thursday

Today at the writers' workshop the prompt was from Shauna. She gave each of us some pages with interesting lists, to make us think about our lives and the people associated with us at various stages of it.

Time Line..............I choose 10 - 15. ...it was the 50s, it was Co Down, and all was well in my world.

Before the Fall

Time was endless, friends were many.

Vicky and Sandy, and I was Gerry.

We laughed a lot, linked arms and talked

About boys we fancied and those we stalked.

A caravan was where we gathered 

Under the stars at Ballyferris

Our bare feet kicking the silver sand.

Where time was endless, nothing planned.

"There's  Cassiopeia and there's the Plough".

"Oh your luck's in, there's a shooting star!"

We raced down maran covered dunes

And harmonised on Western tunes.

And miles away on the far horizon

Were ships bound for ports in the land of England.

We seldom thought of our futures then,

But time and tide don't wait for man.

They pass unseen and never waver

Then gather up all in their net without favour.

And I daren't go back to that holy place

Where time stood still. A time when space

And mercy was real, before the fall

That enveloped and overwhelmed us all.

Before everything...dad.

Dad's garage....was not for the car.
For on a rough wooden bench...with oil stains from sump oil spilled from the pot that was used to seal the wooden and tarred roof ....stretching across the garden end ... the important joinery was carried out.
 An ancient wooden and metal vice...with a long handle slotted through the turning screw and two balls of metal...one at either end  to hold the bar in place...was screwed to the bench.
Along the walls, held in place with strips of wood tacked on to the vertical structure, were off cuts of timber kept for use in future assemblages.
Under the work bench and to the right in the darkness was an ancient travel trunk with a domed lid and wooden slats that held down the oiled fabric on the top.
 In this trunk were kept scrolls extolling the different members of the Williamson family and their academic successes.
 And also in this treasure box under the scrolls were hidden beautiful 1st world war postcards with  messages of love embroidered on silken gauze and pictures woven to depict exotic places.
To the left and behind the side door, a dog's bed with straw and water dish, for dad was born a farmer's son and took a hound with him when he went hunting .He was always a country man at heart.
His woodworking tools were beautiful . Handmade by himself at the City technical college in his free time. Oak and mahogany handles turned and often enscribed with his name D.G.McC. There were wooden boxes on the top of the workbench holding nails, screws, hinges and other equipment in separate sections.
A window above the bench looked out to his garden of roses and perennials.And always a bed of sweet pea to scent the air at the end of summer.
Above his head, slotted along the roof joists were more lengths of wood. Whether they were ever used I cannot say but it all seemed to me to be a sacred place. Nowadays I suppose it would be called a man cave...and there is no doubt that it was a place of refuge from the hustle and bustle of family life.

In this holy space, a caravan was conceived and built.