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.
