The Full Irish: Travel and Castlerock Bann
Even on a day "off," we're playing nine.
Today, we left the Portstewart area and moved west. As noted in the prior post, the original plan was for us to be coming back from Machrihanish and traveling West…and when we scrapped that plan, today was thought to be a travel or an off day. (Seeing Tron Carter play Machrihanish in the latest NLU Film Room does sting a bit.) Having a wee bit of a golf problem, I looked into whether we could play Castlerock (Mussenden), one of the 18 hole courses in the area that we heard a lot about … but as I was looking into it, two things happened.
It felt like we were really pushing it - we’re about to head into a few days with more than 18 holes a day, and we’ve just played six days straight.
Folks in the know kept talking about the nine hole course at Castlerock, called the Bann course.
Founded: 1980s
Ratings:
Top100GolfCourses: 16 (Northern Ireland)
Anecdotally: #1 9-hole course (Ireland)
Nine holes sounded lovely, perfect even.
And this description from Top100GolfCourses sounded even more appealing.
Created in the mid 1980s by the late Billy Kane who followed a Frank Pennink design, the Bann course is tucked away beyond a caravan park behind the clubhouse and its very easy for the casual visitor to know nothing about its existence. Once on the course, golfers are isolated in their own private little golfing world, hidden from view, for the most part.
That sounded nice.
I’d also heard there were no bunkers at all here, and again - break me off a piece of that. That turned out to be wrong, but only slightly. David found the lone bunker and spent a good part of the morning in it, to good cheer.
But the hype about the Bann course in general was well founded. It’s kind of insane. The first hole, a par-4, and all the par-3’s are the only four holes of the nine that aren’t a blind shot and in some cases, we absolutely guessed wrong where the hole would be or what was over that hill.
For 30GBP, the Bann course might be the steal of the century. It’s incredibly tight and most of us lost more than our fair share of balls throughout the round, but it was a really fun way to spend the morning. Thunder joined us before heading to Dublin, and we shall indeed miss the guy. On his way FROM Dublin is Dean, who met us in Derry in the evening.
On the way to Derry, I almost got t-boned at a roundabout (totally my fault) and then almost rear-ended someone who idiotically came to a full-stop on a road for no discernible reason. (I think, charitably, they were either terrified of the oncoming traffic in the other lane, or thought a paper bag in the road was a large rock.) So, that was fun. Rob and family had headed to Derry in the morning, and we’d join up in the evening for dinner and/or a drink before they too head to Dublin to return to the states.
The history of Derry, especially during the Troubles, is pretty serious and extensive. The Bloody Sunday monument and other cultural landmarks are strewn about the city.
Indeed, the city (nicknamed “The Walled City” for it’s historical walls to protect the city - but apt for the much more recent “freedom walls” separating the Protestants and Catholics) has been called not just Derry but Londonderry, and I can’t say that I didn’t worry a bit about the “right” thing to call it, settling mostly on Derry at this point.
(It’s also worth noting I probably sung along to the lyrics of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2 a few hundred times without really knowing what it was even about. The fact that I was alive for all of The Troubles without really understanding what was happening is a testament to my youth, the fact that America is insanely insular, and also that I’m an idiot.)
Before I left for the trip, I read Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Say Nothing.” I followed that up with a PBS five-part miniseries called “Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland,” and both of those made me feel like I understood - slightly - the history I should have known a LOT more about beforehand. I’d been to “IRA bars” in San Francisco without really knowing what that meant. I highly recommend both.
The murals just outside The Walls of Derry are large, vivid and angry as hell. It’s super powerful.
The Bloody Sunday mural just across from the monument itself is haunting.
We also got to see a few Derry Girls specific things inside the city, and a mural of the actors outside, which pleased David to no end. (I have yet to see it, but I’m thinking I need to now.)
We headed back to our hotel where Dean was waiting, and had a lovely dinner before his jet lag and our fatigue began to set in and we called it a night.
Tomorrow, we head to Ballyliffin. It turns out by doing so, we’ll be leaving Northern Ireland (which I thought went farther west along the coast, but nope.) These few days in Northern Ireland have been really interesting and I’m definitely going to revisit the books, movies and TV shows that highlight the area and its history. But for now, we leave for Ireland itself and a LOT more golf.
I started putting together some videos of our trip. Here’s one recapping much of the above.