Leg 33, Complicated two part hike today – Park one covered the 17k link section from Binevenagh to Magilligan Point, part two was 16k and consisted of the hike from Castlerock down the left bank of the Bann river to Coleraine then up the opposite bank to Portstewart. The reason WalkNI included the Castlerock to Portstewart section is to link the Ulsterway to the Causeway route. The reason they included the spur out to Magilligan Point is to remind all walkers that there is always someone worse off than you.
The Magilligan peninsula is a 70 square kilometre board flat plain stretching from the foot of the Binevenagh cliffs to the sea, in most places it struggles to obtain an elevation of even 5m above sea level. From the cliffs above in clear weather the place has the look of a rural life canvas painted by an artist with only a poor grasp of perspective, and looking back from the plain itself the sight of Binevenagh’s cliffs surging skyward is impressive. However, in today’s wet foggy weather the place has all the charm of a knee in the groin.
The area appears to focus on 3 activities:
(1) Emerald Lawns Ltd grow and export lawn turf, their fields are billiard table flat and stretch over many many acres.
(2) a huge army shooting range – you may think that the absence on a firing range of anything that might be considered a hill throws doubt on the thoroughness of the army’s rifle training but I’m pretty confident that if we ever go to war with Holland we will kick their ass. Rather unexpectedly I came across cattle grazing on the range and while the small herd I passed seemed nervous about my approach I think they ought to be more concerned by the fluttering red flag in the distance. Actually the whole peninsula has the slightly sinister air of a “government facility”, the slopes of Binevenagh are replete with self-consciously twee houses fronting odd shaped earth mounds topped with gravel beds and unlikely garden furniture – emphasising rather than camouflaging the presence of what I am neurotically certain are biological warfare bunkers or entrances to subterranean missile silos.
(3) Imprisonment, though unmarked on any map the Magilligan prison site is a huge squat cluster of buildings set within the firing range. I managed to sneak a photo of a portion of the walls because the operation in progress reminded me of a Colditz POW veteran who made the point that when attempting to tunnel out of prison it is important to find a balance between the speed of digging and the need to avoid drawing the guards’ attention to your activity. I think the planners of the prison break under way here may have got the balance between tunnelling efficiency and secrecy wrong!
The walk from Castlerock was a rather joyless road trudge undertaken at a faster pace than usual as I needed to get home before 4pm. My progress was slowed in one section by a heard of cows being moved about half a kilometre along the road. Bizarrely the herding was being done by a man driving a JCB bulldozer; for any farmer out there thinking of repeating this approach I can confirm that it is astonishingly inefficient. No amount of engine revving or digger bucket raising and lowering had any effect on the cattle, so the driver had to jump out of the cab wave his arms and shout, an action which startled the cows and made them scatter all over the road. He then had to run around and using a length of blue piping retrieved from his cab re-group the herd progressing them about 10 meters along the road. He would then re-enter his cab drive the 10 meters gained and start the futile engine revving and bucket raising routine all over again – in this stuttering fashion he inched his cattle down the road. It would have been quicker to load each cow individually into the bucket and move the herd one-by-one to its new location. The cumulative effect was that I lost time and had to stride quickly through Coleraine when I had planned to call into the offices of David Gibson Financial Planning to thank David for his earlier very generous sponsorship and support for the Huntingtons Association.
I am home tonight as tomorrow is a rest day before my last 3 day sprint along the causeway coast and south over the Antrim hills to the end. However, I must mention the wonderful support I have had over the past 4 days from my friend Rozzy who found time in her hectic family/work life schedule not only to accommodate, feed, ferry and accompany me but did so with such good natured giggly humour I could almost believe that I was no imposition.
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