We departed Glasgow on a 5 hour train ride north into the West Scottish Highlands and Fort William. The scenery changed quickly from urban to a starkly beautiful landscape of bogs, rock, and rolling hills. The weather became a constant fog and cold mist.

The combination of the changed weather and rugged scenery looked right out of Harry Potter and well it should since we were on the very train line that has been featured on every one of those movies. With a bit of planning and a lot more fare money we could be on the Jacobite Train, the steam train Harry rode to Hogwarts every year! It’s a real train that travels between Fort William to Mallaig. It is incredibly popular and considered one of the greatest train journeys in the world. Tickets must be purchased weeks and sometimes months in advance. Fortunately, the “ordinary” train plies the same route and while popular, does not require such planning or capital. In the next 3 days we may day-trip to Mallaig, but for now we are happily in Fort William on the shores of Loch Linnhe.

This is a thriving community of 10,500 and a draw for tourists eager to hike the Highlands and perhaps climb Ben Nevis, at 4,411 feet the highest mountain in the entire United Kingdom. Depending on the weather I may give the climb a go of it.

Our train ride was quite crowded and in mid-journey it divided. 4 coaches split off for Oban and our train consisting of the two remaining cars then continuing on to Fort William.

I love new foods. I have rarely found a cuisine I disliked, and as I sit here I can’t think of a single one! I figure if an entire people like a dish then there is a reason. This is one of the very few things upon which Christine and I are not in agreement. In Scotland I have found (to Christine’s wonder) two new favorites in Haggis and Black pudding. They are simply the best! However, description of their ingredients could give one pause.

Haggis is a combination of a sheep’s offal mixed with oats and spices, sewn into the sheeps stomach and boiled. Cut open the stomach and dig in… Wonderful! Black Pudding is not a pudding as we know it in North America, but rather it is a traditional blood sausage made from blood (of course!) grain, spices, and meat. It is a breakfast staple in the UK. I seek it out any chance I get.

Fort William is crowded, perhaps for an antique car rally, in addition to the usual crowd of Highland tourists. I could not find an available accommodation until I lucked upon an AirBnB and it’s wonderful owner, Shana. She picked us up at the train station and has even done our laundry! We will enjoy Fort William and her hospitality for the next 4 nights, the longest we have been in one place since this journey began.

Peace Everyone. Pete

We arrived in Belfast Wednesday afternoon the 16th and after settling in did a bit of walking which took us to the Crown Bar, the oldest pub in NI, and across the campus of Queen’s University to the stunning Botanic Gardens Park.

We then made arrangements for a “Black Cab” tour of Belfast for Thursday morning, and an afternoon tour of the former shipyards site of H&W where the Titanic and her sister ships were constructed.

Belfast has been a city torn by conflict since 1968. On the surface the division is Catholic vs Protestant, Loyalist vs Nationalist, but in reality it is much more complicated than that with roots that go deep into history. The Battle of the Boyne which was fought over 400 years ago, remains a current event. In 1968 ethno-nationalist riots broke out that were quelled by British troops and the erection of 40 foot high walls to separate the factions. Paramilitary organizations on both sides then prosecuted a 30 year long guerrilla war that resolved in a cease fire in 1998. The 30 years of the active conflict saw over 3,500 killed and nearly 50,000 injured. The troops are gone, but the wall remains operational. A “battle” of competing murals and annual bonfires lit on the 11th of July are a more benign continuation of the tensions that are known throughout Ireland as “The Troubles”.

The depth and complexity of the conflict and aftermath invite further examination. I have included links to three articles that may give additional insight..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murals_in_Northern_Ireland

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleventh_Night

Our “Black Cab” tour driver gave an excellent and balanced narrative, stopping at important locations and murals. This tour was the highlight of our stay in Belfast.

The Titanic Museum tour is at the site of the construction and launch of the vessel in 1911. Included was a tour of the “Nomadic”, one of the Titanic’s passenger tender vessels and the last remaining White Star Line ship. The Nomadic has been painstakingly restored, and even has its original 19th Century “Crapper” toilets.

The Museum was “touristy” but worth the visit. I will just leave it at that.

We leave in a few hours for the ferry to Scotland.

Peace Everyone. Pete

The story goes that many years ago Johnny Cash was in a plane flying over Ireland. Gazing down he exclaimed, “There must be forty shades of green down there!” From those words he penned the following lyrics:

“I close my eyes and picture the emerald of the sea.

From the fishing boats at Dingle to the shores of Dunardee

I miss the river Shannon and the folks at Skibbereen

The moorlands and the midlands with their forty shades of green.”

Ireland is green because it rains here, a lot. If there were once forests they are mostly gone. In their place are endless seas of grass, broken only by ancient stone walls erected by the long dead but not forgotten. Grass in forty shades of green.

It stays green for but a season and then bends to its permanent sleep upon the fields, hillsides, and valleys of this enchanted land. Generations of verdant blades climb one upon the other, blackening in the acidified and oxygen deprived bogs. Carbon is captured, compressed, and becomes the precursor of bituminous coal at the rate of one millimeter each year, one inch every quarter century, a yard in a millennium.

Four thousand years ago the Hibernians learned of necessity that the common turf upon which they tread and under which they buried their dead could be dried to burn and warm hearth and home. They knew the pleasant glow, the spicey fragrance, and the cinder free and nearly ashless firebox of the morning. The “wizards” of a distant future would render the poetry of this warming stuff into cold calculations:

• It covers nearly 2% of Earth’s land.

• It has twice the energy potential of unseasoned firewood.

• It has captured and holds over 500 billion tons of greenhouse carbon from the atmosphere… an unimaginable mass of over 4 trillion cubic meters of the dark stuff.

This is peat. It has preserved the victims of ritual sacrifice, until their discovery and “resurrection” allowed these mute dead to speak their story in the language of archeologists, pathologists, and geneticists.

This is peat. It’s vapors roast malts that color and flavor select whiskeys of Ireland and the whisky of Islay Scotland.

This is the dark brown peat that was once forty shades of green.

Peace Everyone. “Peat”

We leave the Republic of Ireland tomorrow and head into Belfast, Northern Ireland. Some images from today follow.