A Pilgrimage Along the Antrim Coast

Where the Road Turns North

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

The first time I came to Bushmills was on the 12th of July, marching day. Liz and I had arrived after walking the Giant’s Causeway, flushed from the wind and wonder of that otherworldly coastline. The scene that greeted us in town was festive. Roads were closed. Crowds gathered on the pavements. And the air, somehow, felt charged. Waiting for something.

I had no clue what was happening until I heard the huge Lambeg Drum and saw the orange banners. Then it clicked, the Battle of the Boyne, still commemorated here since 1690. I looked down and realized, by chance, I was wearing an orange rain jacket. An accident of fate that now made me uncomfortable. I asked Liz if I could swap for her green one. She laughed, but obliged, and I walked the rest of the day in a too-tight jacket, looking like an Irish Tyrannosaurus. I felt stupid. But it also left a question I couldn’t shake: Why had I felt the need to switch?

That question occurs to me each time I drive the Antrim coast. When I think of the future, where is the Orange order in a united Ireland? Growing up I would never have considered this question as the possibility seemed impossibly remote. Now it seems a united Ireland may happen in my lifetime. Honestly, I don’t think it’s soon. As I drive north, I seek to understand not just the politics of reunification, but what it might actually feel sharing this ground if Ireland were united.

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We leave Belfast early, the city still drowsy under grey skies. The open water of Belfast Lough opens in front of us. Lough means lake in Irish. This isn’t a lake, it used to be called Carrickfergus Bay which seems like a better name. When we come to Carrickfergus we drive past the waving Ulster banner and Union Flag, we circle the roundabout with signs to the royal family.

We park at Carrickfergus castle, built by John DeCourcy in 1178. The name of the town hints at an older history. Founded by Fergus Mor of Dal Riata, an ancient kingdom that spanned the North Channel between Scotland and Ireland.

This place will always be associated with William of Orange, the Dutch prince who would fight against his father-in-law. William landed here at Carrickfergus castle when he came to march south to meet James II. At the Battle of the Boyne his success brought about the end of the reign of the Stuarts forever in England, Ireland, and Scotland.

This place is still today a bastion of protestant unionism. Standing beneath these walls, I wonder: in a united Ireland, how does that story go?

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As we come to the small village of Glynn, the Ulster banner is flying and the curbs are painted the blue, red and white of the Union flag. We see the seal of the Orange order painted on the road. I find myself carefully watching where I step, as if the painted ground itself might take offense.

The road here is part of the island that is steeped in the politics of Ireland. Here, the landscape of myth is claimed by both sides and stories unfold regardless of borders. Each painted curb asks a question: In a united Ireland, what happens to these curbs? Why should anything happen to them ?

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We passed a rugby field. A sign of hope in my mind. Rugby is a sport where Ireland has one team, including the Republic and Northern Ireland. One sport where we play together. One of the questions was addressed. What do you play for the national anthem? You play a new rugby anthem, Ireland’s Call.

Not replacing what was but adding something new. I think this is how unity comes, not through erasure but through addition.

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In Larne, Loyalist murals leave no doubt where the town stands. Over a century ago, it played a key role in the infamous Larne gunrunning. In April 1914, Unionists smuggled nearly 20,000 German-made Mauser rifles into Ulster, landing them at Larne, Bangor, and Donaghadee. The operation was mounted in defiance of the British government’s plan for Irish Home Rule. Though it occurred decades before the Troubles, the Larne gunrunning marked the beginning of organized paramilitary forces on Irish soil, a shadow that would stretch far into the twentieth century.

The desperation in that act, I understand it differently now. It’s the fear of being erased, of losing your story. Any reunification must reckon with this fear, must promise that their stories too will be Irish stories.

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The Antrim Coast Road was carved in the 1830s by Scottish engineer William Bald, who defied the land’s resistance by dynamiting a path along the cliffs. Before then, boats connected these isolated communities with Scotland more than Belfast. Bald’s vision was nearly impossible. The cliffs were unforgiving, the sea relentless. Workers hung from ropes to chisel the rock, blasting a path just wide enough for a horse and cart.

Perhaps this road is Ireland’s island boundary, a place where boundary is made tangible and begins to carry new weight. The Glens of Antrim open before us, flowing naturally between communities. The air along the Causeway Coast is salted with stories, each turn carries a memory. Gorse blooms yellow on the hillside. Stone walls wind like veins across the green skin of the hills.

This is one of those places that makes me think about how unique each part of Ireland is. I grew up in Kildare, flat plains, quiet bogs, open vistas. But here, each corner of coastline makes me look inward into a unique world far from what I grew up with.

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As we approach Carnlough, we see the Irish tricolor flying and the school names in Irish. The tide is out in the very picturesque small harbor. This place was important before the road was built. This harbor traded with Scotland, just a few miles away across the North Channel. We stop for a break and explore the harbor. Imagine the world when this place’s connection to Scotland defined the world these people lived in. The connection between Scotland and Ireland was strong before Fergus Mor invaded Scotland. There is evidence of trade between Ireland and Scotland from neolithic times.

At Glenariff, the Queen of the Glens, archaeologists found Neolithic tools and Bronze Age cairns. Legend has it that one tomb is the resting place of Oisin, the son of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, who aged differently in the faerie world which doomed him when he returned to Ireland. Like many of these places scattered around the country, the stones had been repurposed to build walls and homes over centuries. Now sheep graze in the ruins.

As the town is left behind, the ruins of Red Bay castle comes into view above the harbor on the site of an earlier Dal Riatan outpost. The Bissetts once controlled Rathlin Island from here but their support for Robert the Bruce ruined their fortunes.

Offshore you see a rock, seabirds nest in narrow ledges. Sometimes beside each other, sometimes at a distance. They return to the same rock each year. Not because it’s safe. But because it’s home.

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Coming down the hill into Ballycastle, Rathlin Island comes into view. I love to stand looking over at the island, just the call of gulls and the heather-scented wind. Rathlin is the only inhabited island off the coast of Northern Ireland and today is a farming community but in the past its strategic location between Ireland and Scotland made it important. In ancient times it was an important Christian center, and it was the first place in Ireland attacked by the Vikings. I feel a little bit like Rathlin island caught between two places, for me it’s Ireland and America.

Robert the Bruce of Scotland, after killing his cousin, sought refuge with his allies the Bissetts in Rathlin and spent the winter there. Legend has it that when Robert’s spirits were broken, he took refuge in a cave. Sitting in the cave, he noticed a small spider attempting to weave a web. The spider tried and failed over and over. Each time the spider fell, it climbed back up to try again. Finally, the spider’s silk took hold, and the spider managed to spin a web.

Perhaps reunification is like that spider, trying, failing, trying again. Not giving up despite the failures.

The island in the 14^th century had a population of about 500 people, but the island has been ravaged by several massacres. In the 15th and again in 17th centuries hundreds of men, women and children were brutally murdered. An Gorta Mór, the Great Famine was to be the end, the island never recovered when hundreds again were forced to leave the island. The population has kept declining and today it is around 125.

Sometimes unity means just surviving together. Sometimes that’s enough.

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The Causeway isn’t just beautiful, it’s impossible. The shapes are so perfect, it proclaims the wonder of nature. Born of fire and cooled by patience, its pillars stand like a cathedral to ancient motion. You feel small there, but rooted, like you belong to earth. At the Causeway, you kneel and press your hand against the stone. Cool, smooth, unyielding. A hexagon older than every human idea of country.

Waves hurled themselves against the basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway, retreated, and returned, never in the same shape. Tourists balanced on hexagons. A father lifted a child for the photo. The sea didn’t stop for any of it. People, all standing on the same ancient stones.

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We stopped into the Bushmill’s Inn for lunch. I ordered a proper carvery lunch, also Liz’s favorite. Later, we toured the Bushmills Distillery. Bushmills had been my god mother’s favorite whiskey and she had given me a taste for it. I had heard people describe it as a protestant whiskey, but I never cared.

The guide spoke reverently of the whiskey making process and of the magic of time in the barrel. Time seems like a good recipe for many things in life.

When we arrived at the tasting segment, Liz does not drink brown alcohol. So, all the whiskey was for me. There were a couple of ladies from Scotland who didn’t really like the whiskey and they too gave me theirs. I would not be driving home.

This was Liz’s first time driving on the other side of the road, but despite some trepidation it was no trouble at all. As we drove south in the gathering darkness, the painted curbs of the morning seemed to fade.

If a united Ireland comes, it might not arrive in the form of referenda or flags. It may arrive like this coast did, in slow erosion of obstructions, in tidal persistence, in quiet acts of recognition. In the sharing of whiskey, in the playing of rugby, in touching ancient stones and telling each other’s stories. Perhaps one day I’ll return to Bushmills wearing orange, and feel no need to switch.

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