Border Journal: Upland

Upland now. Semi-feral sheep amble along fences trailing woolly dreadlocks. I find a border connection at the bottom of a soggy field, a plank bridge going over a ditch. A donkey stands guarding it. I follow lanes, keeping an eye on the border to my right or left.

Border Journal: After Dark

In this border field tonight, sitting outside my tent, I felt a presence. I don’t mean in a spiritual way. It was a tangible energy, hovering somewhere between warmth and a meaty gravity. I felt it on my skin. I couldn't see anything but the stars and black silhouettes of the trees around the field. Then I heard the distinct splutter of a horse. I stood as the horse approached; it was as black as the night, two stars for eyes.

Border Journal: Kiltyclogher

The border passes through a small lake. Dusk, I make camp by the shore and walk into the nearest village. Tonight Kiltyclogher’s three streets are deserted and dark. No cars pass. The village is hushed. There is a summer heaviness in the air, perhaps all the pollen from the fields all around. I sense domestic comfort behind closed doors, yellow light spills from windows, the flicker from a television. Suddenly lonesome, I peer in the window of a pub. I see a constellation of stars, gleams from bottles, glasses and mirrors. It’s got that warm pub look about it, all browns and golds, lengths of polished brass. But it is Monday, the wrong end of the week. A solitary man is sitting at the bar and looking into his whiskey. There is no one else to be seen, not even staff. I return to my campsite, take my boots off and dip my feet in the lake.

There used to be ...

These photos, published by a newspaper, are a reminder of change.

Border checkpoint, 1980s

The same place today

As I travelled the border I visited many spots that formally hosted checkpoints. Often you can tell a border road was the site of a checkpoint because uprooting the defences has left a gaping lay-by, about the length of a truck and trailer. Empty cans, dead leaves, plastic bottles and shopping bags are blown together in the corners. These areas have become truck stops, or been filled with second-hand cars for sale, left parked with signs in their windscreens: “£2000 ONO” and a mobile phone number, northern or southern or both.

I got the photographs from here. 

Border Journal: Pheasants

I march down the hill and across the valley fields. I find ten wooden crates littering an embankment. Some are smashed together at the bottom, others didn’t make it all the way down and seem frozen mid-tumble. The wood has gone grey in the sun. There is a loaded moment when I intuit that another life form is present. Then, in a gush of colour, a pair of pheasants launch from a crate and are in the air, right and left of me, all noise and feathers, flying away across the fields.

Mapping a Railway's Ghost

Once a train line ran from Enniskillen, crossed the border at Belcoo-Blacklion and went on to Silgo. It closed in 1957 but traces of the route can still be seen; raised embankments; sidings; bridges. The artist Séamus Dunbar walked the route and developed an interesting, interactive and very fitting way of presenting his journey. The viewer scrolls through the map, seeing what Dunbar saw and in the order he saw it. The journey is described in ink drawings on a piece of paper several metres long. It is wound up inside the device.



Thanks to Alan Meban for the video

By having the viewer scroll through the journey Dunbar has created a temporal as well as a spatial experience, with fingers taking the place of feet. As new vistas open up ahead, the ground already traversed slips out of sight behind, just like walking.

Dunbar has titled the piece Isolarion 1.

Map of Thrones

I've never seen Game of Thrones but I'm told it is doing for Northern Ireland what Lord of the Rings did for New Zealand; making it seem unreal and making people want to visit. The cast and crew get around Europe a fair bit but no other country has provided so many locations for the show as Northern Ireland.

... from the towers of Winterfell (Castle Ward) to the shore of the Iron Islands (Ballintoy Harbour), the rocky beach where the sorceress Melisandre gives birth (Cushendun Caves) to the interlacing beech trees of Kings Road (the Dark Hedges of Armoy). If you’re watching a scene set anywhere near woods, chances are it was filmed in Tollymore Forest. Entering or exiting Castle Black? That’ll be the vast outdoor set constructed in the disused limestone quarry of Magheramorne. And the number of interiors shot at the Paint Hall studio in Belfast — where the shipyard that built the Titanic has been turned into one of the biggest studio complexes in Europe — are too many to mention.

Helpfully, a map has been created.



I found the map here and the quote comes from here.