Day 25

To say that today has been the worse day of my trip so far would be an understatement. But first, I'll continue yesterday’s account.

I found the youth hostel, belonging to YHI, but the door was locked, and a sign on the door said the hostel was closed between 11 and 5 each day.

I was standing at the door, wondering what to do, when someone from inside opened it. She is a guest and told me the price for each room is about £10!

The wind hadn’t lessened in the time it had taken me to find the hostel since the pub. I would have been physically unable to ride on, so I decided to stay here. Now, while writing this, it does sound a little extreme, but it's true. I wish I could describe how strong it is.

The girl invited me to put my bag inside, underneath the staircase. I was a little worried about its safety, but the thought of carrying it around for the next three hours was enough to forego any of these worries, legitimate or not. I took the daypack off the backpack and prepared myself for three hours of a freezing Armagh.

I rode down a steep hill and up another steep hill, following the signs to where the Catholic cathedral of St. Patrick dominates the skyline. The cathedral was built on this hill to mark the spot where St. Patrick had released a fawn that his companions had wanted to kill and eat. The site of his first church was, long ago, taken by the Anglican Church of Ireland, so the Catholics had to settle for a lesser site.



After taking a photo of the front of the cathedral with my useless camera, I rode slowly around the building. The hill it is situated on is quite high, and the views from the top are wonderful. I could see how many hills I have ridden up and down earlier that day. I guess that the fact that ‘Armagh’ comes from the Irish ‘Ard Macha’, which means ‘the heights of Macha’ (Macha is a legendary queen from a long time ago) should have warned me that this place is hilly. I tied the bike up to some railings on the steps, near the doors and went inside.

There were some boys inside, practising their bible readings, and a choir practising a song. Four or five musicians adjusted their instruments and began playing The Minstrel Boy, a traditional Irish song that the Corrs play on their first CD! I have often thought that this song had some sort of religious sound to it, though I didn’t know why. Maybe it doesn’t, but listening to these boys, with their violins, playing this song inside the centre of Catholic faith in Ireland was quite amazing.

I group of school boys came in the front doors, with their teachers behind them, directing them to be quiet, and to sit in their proper places. More boys followed. Ten minutes after I arrived the place was full, and I mean full, of schoolboys of all ages, all dressed in uniform and a mass started!

I found out a bit later that it was the Festival of the Immaculate Conception. I sat through the mass, which was a complete mass, and looked around the church as it went on. The inner walls are covered from floor to ceiling with mosaics. Most of the patterns are repeated, the shamrock being the most common symbol.

At regular intervals, the stations of the cross are carved out of stone. They were incredible works of art. The faces had great detail, with expressions of pain and evil intent and the like. The folds of the clothes were carved with care, the whips of the Roman officers, even the grains on the cross. Amazing.

The roof also had patterns, though I have no idea if it was a massive mosaic, large tiles or just painted stones, as it was so high up.

I went outside after all the boys had left (which took almost twenty minutes) and was nearly knocked over by the wind! It really was gale strength. There was no way I could have ridden against that with the backpack on. The building did nothing to block the wind; it was coming right across the face of it. While I was trying to put the bike back together on the steps, the wind kept catching the wheels and lifted the bike out of my hands a number of times. With four or five boys looking on, I struggled like this for a number of minutes, and then had the bright idea to carry everything around to the side of the building and assemble the bike there, which took place in a minute or so, as it is supposed to.

It was now getting late. There was a little rain, nothing to worry about really; I didn’t bother putting the raincoat on. I rode into the town centre (which looks very different at night time) and found a pub that was willing to put my bike around the back; there was no place on the street to lock it.

It was a fairly small pub. There was no one in it other than the bar tender and myself. The back half, which serves as a lounge, is being done up, so there was plastic sheeting, tools and sawdust everywhere. The builder had finished for the day and I don’t think they were expecting any sort of crowd in the bar until everything had finished.

The bar tender put my bike in a shed around the back of the pub. There was a small alley between this pub and the one next to it (which had a lot of people inside it!). I had to squeeze by bike between the wall and a Guinness truck that had backed into the alley. The alley fed into another tiny road that leads nowhere. It simply serves these two pubs. The shed was on the second road. It contained used kegs and old, broken tables. It took a lot of effort to get the bike inside as a big round table had to be rolled out of the way and then lifted over a number of kegs. It was very nice of the guy to do it, but I guess I was his first customer for a week.

A whiskey, a pint and a half (£4.70) and an hour and a half later, it was finally after 5 pm and I could go to the hostel. During this time I had a fairly good conversation with the bar tender, whose name is Seamus. This was evidently a Republican pub, though it wasn’t as obvious as some of the other pubs I have been in. There were a fair amount of newspaper clippings behind glass cabinets on the walls. They weren’t so much about Republican issues, but rather about people; I guess the locals. Mo Mowlam was in one of the photos, she had her arms around an old man. In another story, someone had won the Irish National Road Bowling Championships. I asked Seamus what road bowling was. He only has one arm, so perhaps it was the wrong question to ask. He said it was a sport mostly played in Armagh. Small, steel balls are thrown onto a road in some way. He was never too clear on how to do it. Apparently it is a real art, though I would rather cricket.

I guess I shouldn’t have spent that much money on drink, but I was cold and damp (the Kathmandu hadn’t dried from all the sweat) and it was a moment of weakness. Whiskey really does warm you up! Also, Conor more than once had whiskey with a Guinness chaser in Trinity. They really work well together.

I went to the hostel, in a fairly wobbly fashion. The man behind the counter normally does not run the hostel; he is sitting in for his daughter who is away for a day or two. He took pity on my situation, but he said there was no work for me to do (there is already a Norwegian here who is doing work for cheap lodgings) and no way I could get a discount. For £10.75 per night, I get a bed in a four-bed room. Since there are only about four other guests in the hostel, it is to myself - which is some concession. And it has an en suite, so at least I won’t have to traipse down cold hallways in the middle of the night if I want a shower or the use of the toilet.

Breakfast would cost £2.25 and I accepted.

I had my first shower since Sunday morning and it was very hot and very long. I think it counts as one of the best showers I have ever had. It was pretty good.

I got directions to Sainsbury’s and eventually found it, through the gale, and bought a frozen pizza, a jar of honey, a loaf of bread and some butter for £4. I forgot to buy a toothbrush.

The route to the shop takes me past the big Anglican cathedral of St. Patrick, down some steep steps, through a plaza, along a street full of shops and then into a bit of a square where the entrance to the building housing Sainsbury’s is. Although at this point in my narrative I had only made the trek twice (there and back) I have now done it a couple of times, both during the day and in darkness. I have to say it is quite a nice little town. The Christmas lights (once you get away from the area that plays the Christmas songs) are quite nice, and the freezing cold adds to the atmosphere. Snow would fit very well, but God knows I do not want more snow with the lousy cold weather preparation I have made for the trip. The city is as nice or perhaps even nicer than the centre of Derry and certainly nicer than Belfast. It is not dirty like Belfast.

The weather on the TV said the strong wind was caused by a low pressure that is moving away. The winds would still come from the south on the 9th, ease during the afternoon and by the 10th, will be blowing from the northwest again. Another low will bring more bad weather by the weekend (11th and 12th).

No worries. I decided to stay here two nights. I will ride out to Navan fort today, no matter what the weather, and see the rest of the city in the afternoon.

Yesterday I spent £23.60. Not good.

I woke up today and went down to breakfast; I was not pleased. £2.25 should have bought me good coffee, good orange juice, bacon, sausages and eggs. And toast.

What I got was bad coffee, bad orange juice and the cheapest looking and tasting corn flakes I have ever seen. They were worse than Israeli corn flakes, and that is saying something. The toast was real, albeit only slightly warm and the jam pretty bad. I know why Yanks call jam ‘jelly’. This jam looked like jelly; there were no lumpy bits in it at all. The complete breakfast should have cost £1.

The dining area of the hostel (clean, plastic and rather large for four people) has windows that run the length of the room. They face in a northerly direction, back towards Dungannon and Cookstown. The Catholic Cathedral is just visible if one presses ones’ face to the glass and looks eastward. At breakfast, the weather outside looked fantastic! The sky was blue, there was no rain and the trees were not swaying! No wind! What happened to the two day long gale that I am sheltering from? As late as last night the weatherman told me this morning the wind would be blowing from the south with gale strength.

After a bit of contemplation, I decided I would stay here another night anyway. I wanted to see the fort and a day’s rest is nice, even if it does cost over £10.

In the end, the weather has been good all day. No rain (well, not much), almost no clouds and no wind.

I set off on the bike and was riding comfortably. It is so wonderful riding without the backpack. My best day of riding has been that day in the wind and rain at Malin Head. I had ridden for one mile when disaster struck. The axle collapsed. This should not have happened. The bike has probably only ridden about 450 kilometres (350 on this trip).

I was pedalling quite normally, going up a hill, so I stood up to get more speed (‘King of the Mountain!’). It is great not having the backpack on. I have a tried a number of times to stand up while going up a hill with the backpack, and it is just impossible to do for more than a pedal or two. Anyway, I stood up and noticed that the pedal was a little stiff. I didn’t have any time to think about this, however, as in the next rotation there was a loud cracking sound and the pedal was stuck. The bike rolled to a stop, a got off and looked. The shaft going down to the pedal didn’t look askew, but it wouldn’t rotate.

I was instantly having all sorts of thoughts along the lines of ‘this trip is over’, etc.

I walked backed into town and found a bike shop almost straight away, and asked what it would cost to fix it. That was when I was told that the axle had collapsed. It would take twenty pounds to fix, but it would take him a week to get the part. According to the man, no shop in Ireland would have the part, as Scotts (the brand of the bike) are not sold over here. He directed me to another shop, saying they would say the same thing, but it was worth while trying them just in case. The new shop scoffed at the first shop, and said £20, and it would only take two days to get the part.

I didn’t know what to do. I gave it a bit of thought and decided against it. I thanked them for their help, but told them no. They said that if I changed my mind, I would just have to go back later in the day.

I had a couple of possible contacts. There was a guy who stayed on the kibbutz for only three days way back in early ‘98 called Shane Leahy. He was the guest of a volunteer who met him in some hostel in Tel Aviv. I was off work at the time due to a fractured skull, and spent a bit of time with him. We became pals in those three days. He was impressed at my general knowledge of the Troubles, and more impressed with the amount of newspaper articles on my wall. He told me that his parents ran a youth hostel in Cashel called ‘Bailey’s’. The makers of the liqueur sponsor it, and any guest has free Bailey’s for as long as they are there! One day I would love to go there. Shane told me that his parents often allow people to stay for free in exchange for work, and that he would make sure I would get a job there if I was passing through Cashel. I rang the hostel. Shane’s father answered and told me that Shane is in England until the 17th, and that there was no work (it being winter and all). He said it was a shame that I would not be able to make it to Cashel and meet up with Shane.

It really is a shame that I can’t get there. Cashel was at one stage the seat of the High Kings of Ireland. It is very close to Tara, where each new king was splashed in the blood of the preceding king (who was killed), in a ‘birth’, so as to show that the line of kings never die. A little gruesome, but I’m sure it would be worth seeing.

Due to a little confusion with the bloody public phone, the call cost me £1.50.

I rang John Kelly in Dublin (£1) but couldn’t get hold of him. John Kelly is a friend of my sister and expressed willingness to put me up in an emergency.

I rang the McStay’s, but they weren’t home. These are a name associated with the ICEJ - Mum had given me their name and number, but I was a little reluctant to use it, they don’t know me and they don’t know about me. I was going to ask about cheap accommodation - in the hope they would offer their house!

I had left a message on John Kelly’s (work) answering machine but couldn’t get hold of him when I tried later. It is now 4 pm and I will try his home number soon.

I went to ‘St. Patrick’s Trian’. This is a museum divided into three parts; the history of Armagh, the story of St. Patrick and also Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, who was Dean at the church here. The latter is designed for children, but it was shelter from the rain and cold, so I'm not complaining. A decent museum; I spent two hours in there and came out wondering what to do. The museum cost £3.75 and was well worth it.

St. Patrick was born to a wealthy Romano-British family in northwest England in the 5th Century. The Roman Empire was just about finished by this time but his family still held some prominence.

The community that he lived in had fallen away from the Church and God, though the priests still exhorted them to remain true to God.

His family had some land on the coast and he was holidaying here at 16 years of age when some Irish raiders (probably attached to the Viking settlements in Ireland) kidnapped him and many other youths, whisking them away to slavery.

For six years he was a slave, tending sheep on some mountain in Co. Antrim (which Mary Alcock pointed out for me from the car). He started praying and became closer and closer to God, having a deep personal relationship with Him.

After six years he had a dream in which some voice told him that it was time to run away and go back to his homeland. He roamed 200 miles before he found a ship going to England and willing to take him, and was reunited with his kinsfolk.

After a short time back with his family, he had another dream telling him to return to Ireland as a missionary. He did this, with great success.

The ministry he founded was a mixture of the pagan Gaelic traditions with the Roman faith. The Trinity and God, etc. still had dominance, but services were held in Gaelic, the great Gaelic stories were written down for the first time, etc. And the gospels were written down in Gaelic.

Padraig (Patrick) wanted to build a church and he found a nice hill two or three miles from the fort of Navan, the capital of Ulster and where the High King lived. The King granted him permission to build his church at the foot of the hill, which wasn’t what Patrick wanted, but he was obviously not one to complain.

While he was building his church, the king’s horse wandered into Patrick’s land and the next day was found dead. Patrick went to see the King (to apologise?) who was quite angry and condemned Patrick to death, whereupon the King instantly dropped dead himself.

The Queen was predicably upset and she obviously noted this to Patrick, who blessed some water and sprinkled it on both the King and his dead horse (I’m unclear as to how the dead horse came to be at the palace along with Patrick. Both recovered and the King was so pleased by his recovery that he allowed Patrick to build his church on top of the hill.

Patrick carried all his stuff up there (it’s a bloody steep hill, I might add) and built his church.

Four centuries later, Brian Buru defeated the invading Normans but died in the same battle. He was buried in the (now ruined) church, which he had promised to restore. The church was rebuilt and destroyed a number of times, by the Vikings, the Saxons (English), the Normans (English), and by the Catholics (as it was a Church of Ireland church by this time). The big Church of Ireland cathedral now standing was built in the 19th Century and all there remains of Brian Buru’s grave is a plaque saying he is buried ‘near this spot’.

I remembered I had a BT calling card in my wallet; it turned out to have £4.10 on it! I rang the two Dublin numbers again, with the same result.

It was 2 pm. I decided I would have to have the bike repaired - not being able to contact the Dublin people was a worry. I went back to the bike shop and ordered the part. The woman told me to come back with the bike at about 5 pm.

Back to the hostel, via (the outside of) the Church of Ireland cathedral - it costs £1 to enter.

I will spend another £25 of food and accommodation here at least. I have to spend £15 to get the bike back to England on the plane and a bus trip to Dublin (now more likely) will cost £15 (during my wanderings, I went to the bus station - the bus to Dublin via Monaghan leaves first thing in the morning).

I have £85, minus the £55 above is £30, plus the £40 I have in the bank leaves me £70. The bike will cost me £20, leaving me with £50 maximum for the next 6 days. Which is more than the £4, but I will have no emergency money left. God help me.

I am going to get receipts from the bike shop and the hostel and hopefully get a refund from the bike manufacturer.

6 pm

A faint hope has made me a little happier than I was two hours ago. I took the bike back to the shop, as requested, and was met by a boy younger than me who seemed to know what he was talking about (as opposed to the women who I have been talking to the whole time so far). He forced the pedals to go round, and they did! He said that the crank might not be broken after all, but the ball bearings might be stuffed - or something else. He told me he wouldn’t know for sure until he opened it up and had a look. If I return it to the store by 12 pm tomorrow, he will be able to tell me by then.

I went and phoned John Kelly, but still got no answer (so he will be left with a panicked message from me saying I have no money and need accommodation). I took £30 out of an ATM. It wouldn’t let me have £40. Hmm. So I guess I can take £10 off the amount of money I have for the next six days.

And I spent £1.50 at an Internet place.

The hostel says I can check out tomorrow and then check in again if I have to, but all my bags, etc. will have to left in ‘left luggage’. Now that I think about it, that won’t be open until 5 pm so perhaps I will leave the bag under the steps. There is a panel of buttons at the front door. When I was given the keys, he also gave me the code to get in both the gate and the front door. Leaving the bag under the stairs will enable me to get it if I want to leave here before 5 pm tomorrow (which I really do!)

So, in all, good news. If the best possible option occurs, I will be able to leave here tomorrow, get an hour or to of riding in, not have to spend much money on the bike and not have to pay an extra £10 for accommodation!

I bought a toothbrush, pasta and pasta sauce at Sainsbury’s for £2.60.

Today I spent £21.10, including tonight's accommodation. Tonight I plan to watch TV, read Understanding Ulster, listen to Jerusalem Arise and generally try to relax. I’ll ring John Kelly later.

Later...

Nothing new, except I couldn’t get hold of John Kelly. Also, there will be 35 archaeology students from Dublin here tomorrow night - which if I wanted to be here and had money - could be fun. I guess they’ll be a bit young; university students would be bound to visit Navan fort in their first year, wouldn’t they? I wonder if any Celtic Beauties study archaeology?

One (among many) unfortunate things about suddenly having no money is my Guinness drinking will stop. I have often heard that the closer one gets to Dublin, the better the Guinness gets. I have pretty much been testing this, having a pint every ten or twenty miles. I guess that experiment is at an end.