Our morning arrival at Londonderry was during high tide,
which meant that we could travel well into the mouth of Foyle River and dock
close to the city center.
We were greeted by bag pipes, Irish dancing, and the major
himself who gave us a warm welcome in the Observation lounge on 7th
deck.
Grey skies today, but still another day of pleasant weather,
with no wind or rain in this city which the locals prefer to call Derry. The
prefix was added 400 years ago when London merchants invested heavily and
carved up much of the land between them as plantations.
Many from the ship
visited the Guild hall which had an excellent exhibition of the development of
Kerry all the way up to the present. The modern strife with the bombing IRA on
one side and heavy-handed authorities on the other had as its worst event
Bloody Sunday, 13 January 1972, when 13 persons in a civilian demonstration
were killed by the police – some of them shot in the back. This was in many
ways a turning point, with many non-involved taking the lead to reduce the
violence and build understanding between the opposing groups of Protestants and
Catholics.
These positive developments are symbolized by the Peace Bridge
opened just a few years ago, uniting both sides of the river. It is a beautiful
multi-curved structure – giving rise to the local joke that we Irish always
screw up – we could not even build a strait bridge!
The original part of the city is confined by a 1, 5 km long
city wall which we could walk on all the way around. Apparently Derry is now
the only remaining walled city in the whole of the UK.
The longer excursion of the day went to the Giant’s Causeway, a natural phenomenon resulting from solidifying lava, and which is Northern Island’s most famous landmark, and its only World Heritage Site. So the bus brought us through the coastal landscape to the visitor’s center where we could start our walk.
We had two hours to explore the steep cliffs and to walk on the regular shaped column-bases at the shoreline, where the power of the waves had eroded the pillars over the ages to flat stepping-stones. Later we stopped at the well-known ruins of Dunluce Castle, also located directly at the cliffs of the Antrim coast.
