Karyn was very pleased with this picture - she felt it represented fantastic composition and made the most of the golf course that I would sadly never play at... :(
Above our first taste of the city of Derry... As it turns out it would take under ten minutes to circumnavigate it on foot. And even at Karyns tortoise pace!
After a snack in the only coffee shop in Derry, we decided to do a tour and find out more about the city. This is after spending an hour checking out the local talent that mostly looked as if they had been working out at MacDonalds.
Our guide, Patrick, was a charismatic Irish Man with a wealth of history behind his years and he was very passionate at getting to the gritty of all the events that had happened in Irish History.
Derry it seems was an important port and has been the bone of contention for many years in NI. The english where first chased out of this part of the world by the Irish clans and eventually returned with all their money and wealth and built a city that is still a maiden and has never been breached.
It was quite an exciting day and Karyn got hot under the color when a bunch of Catholic 'youfs' threw stones at some Protestant 'Youfs' who where busy building a bonfire for their celebrations. The marching of the troops around the walls of Derry.
In this picture you can see the flags on the wall in the background that represent the four nations united... Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England...
This is Karyns contribution to my poor representation of the bonfires. She took this through a canon hole in the wall... as it turns out the walls are littered with canon hole and musket points for soldiers to hide and blast the enemy away from.
Another interesting point which I failed to photograph was the church. All the gravestones where laid flat during the great siege of Derry and where never turned up again... Perhaps they forgot?
In addition to that the church has a hollow canon ball that held a message from the King demanding them to surrender... Patrick proudly announces that this was the worlds first "air mail".
This cannon is known as Roaring Meg and has a sad history behind it. It was so big and powerful that its recoil would drag the cannon a good few meters back from its stance. The problem with this cannon was lighting it, you had to push the fuse into the hole to get the gunpowder to burn. The problem with this was that the person lighting it would be killed instantly by the recoil of the cannon. The Irish found they where losing too many soldiers this way and thus took on dying children to do the job. The children would be held over the canon to light the fuse and would be killed with the recoil.
This is the view where roaring meg would shoot... It would easily throw a massive canon ball well over the trees in the distance.
This is the plaque on roaring Meg...
This is a photo of the bog lands... in the distance you will notice one of the many murals that have a lot of meaning to the irish in this part of the world.
Here Karyn can be seen looking out for her blue eyed Irish boy!
In this picture we have our guide, Patrick, and Phil from Holland and Nick from Australia with his wife Samantha and kids Jenny and Alice.
Here are some more pictures of the Murals in the city. I can't remember the exact history behind them but the one on the left is of a school girl who was killed in a bomb blast. And the one on the right is of a very feisty Irish Politician...
This picture is of a small church... and its not small because the Irish are small... its small because the belief was to do with buildings touching the trees or something like that... strange huh?
The top picture is of a plaque that sits below a platform where the below statue used to sit. The IRA apparently bombed the statue with the help of Munition experts to ensure that the statue imploded so that the pieces did not fall on anyone below. Apparently a couple of kids stole the statues head and sold it for a few quid to buy sweets. It was eventually bought for around 15000 pounds from a museum that had collected it. todate the hand is still missing...
Now the only significance about this picture other than it being a great big phalic symbol is that Karyn told me that I had cut off the top statue... She was right!
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