I met someone I knew in the street. She asked me what I was doing now and I replied that I was going travelling.
“Oh great – where are you starting from?”
“Here.”
It wasn’t altogether a flippant reply, where does a journey start if not from your “home town,” in my case – Sheffield UK where I had been resident for nigh on 30 years.
The decision to travel around the world had been about 12 years in the making. Indeed I had done a “dummy run” aged 50 to the Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) to see if I could cope. I didn’t want to return.
But return I did and then life happened.
Now, I have sold my house – given away my second-hand book business and left myself the time and the finances to do the world tour and I decide to start in Donegal, Ireland. In March. What could go wrong?
So, I am on a ferry from near Stranraer in Scotland to Larne in Northern Ireland. Still in the UK where I was born and raised – but not a part I had visited before. Is this the start of my journey?
Driving off the boat onto a familiar UK roundabout, everything looks the same. The road signs are no different in design but now point to names beginning with Bally, Killy or Dung … exotic but remembered from news stories. I’m a child of the 60’s and 70’s when the “troubles” was always on the TV and these place names are now associated in my mind with sectarianism, knee-cappings and bombs.
But today in the sun, Larne looks inviting, the houses are whiter than I am used to and more spread out, but there is no time to linger as I search out my own Bally – Ballymena and my first B&B of the trip. Soon the car takes me out into open countryside and what glorious countryside it is. Tight, twisty roads give little time to look at the view – but when I do, invariably the word “wow” comes to my lips.
This is what I have come for. To see “new” hills, stone walls, rushing streams. To the locals this will be the everyday, the annoyance that the bad bend means having to slow down; the worry that the tractor will pull out in front. I’m not in tourist country yet. The hotspot is on the North Antrim coast, around the Giant’s Causeway, which is on the route I plan to drive along, on my way to the true start of the trip in Donegal. Is that where the journey begins? And if it does, then what is this?
Eventually, I see signs to the village I am staying at near Ballymena, Culleybackey. Am I going to pick places to stay just because I like the sound of their name?
I find the bungalow with the long driveway, (I soon find they are a common feature here) and ring the doorbell. I am welcomed by the owner of the house and her two Shih tzus who run around me, sniffing the new arrival. Nothing out of the ordinary here. I am ushered into my room for two nights and left to unpack. I look around – the reading material is all about the Irish countryside and the British Royal family. A reminder of how the two are entwined in this part of the UK.
Soon after a welcome slice of lemon drizzle cake and the new taste of a wheaten scone I am asked what I am doing in this part of the world.
“I’m travelling” I answer.
“That’s nice, where are you starting from?”
“Here.”
