Belfast, United Kingdom
54° 34' N 5° 56' W
Mar 29, 2008 15:53
Distance 0km

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West Belfast & Cave Hill

Text written in: English

Deciding that we needed to know more about the history of Belfast, 6 of us took one of the famed black taxi tours of West Belfast. The driver talks about the past, the troubles, the peace lines and shows us the many murals of Belfast’s history. First of all we headed to the Shankill side of town, where the houses in the estate all run into a central park/community area. The ends of all the terraces have huge murals painted on them, all Protestant, so depeicting the past but many remembering their dead soldiers.

Driving on, we headed further into west Belfast to the Catholic parts, separated by the ‘peace lines’…there are around 26 different peace lines in Belfast, so rather than one long section of wall, there are many small ones, just in strategic places directly between catholic and protestant housing. We passed through two sets of gates, which are closed at night, so traffic can pass thru the peace lines during the day, but in an attempt to not encourage trouble at night, the gates are closed to everyone, even the emergency services! We thought we’d seen some walls in Israel near Jeruselem, but here they have huge concrete walls, with fences ontop!..which u can see over the top of some of the houses!

The last stop was Falls Road, the Catholic area of town. Here we saw the Remembrance Garden and a long stretch of murals…most of them involved with international political issues, rather than the local troubles…Palestine particularly and a few anti-Bush ones! Its obvious how passionate the people are here, with such public displays of honour and pride about their origins, religion and politics…I am thankful that its peace time here now…Stormont has been set up as the ‘new’ Parlianment, with a co-leadership which seems to satisfy all political/religious parties…hence the current peace agreement.

On a lighter note, I headed up to Cave Hill on Thursday with a day to myself (band rehearsals!)… I fancied getting out into the fresh air! Cave hill, named due to the small cave seen in one of the pictures!!...is 368m, so not mountainous..but a fairly exhilarating climb. It overlooks the city from the surrounding hills… with great views on a unusually beautiful day! Shame we’re leaving on Sunday, im sure there’s lots more we haven’t done!!

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