Day 10 - Strangford ferry to Portaferry, Kearny National Trust Village and Mount Stewart

Thursday, 24 September 2019
Breakfast today deserves some attention. It's a family affair and it's charming to see a man of quite advanced age helping serve the customers. I feel a bit bad at first being served by such an old gent, when I feel like I should be helping him instead, but then think it's good for old people to be and feel useful, he must want to be doing this, I'm just being age-ist, so just thank him for his attentive service. We both depart from our usual selections. Hubby samples the local smoked kippers with poached egg and I throw down the gauntlet and challenge the Cuan into competition with Castle Leslie on the French Toast front. Both our hot breakfasts are delicious, and well done to the Cuan because their French Toast held up very well. The kippers had a very delicate flavour, quite special.
We have another long list of potential stops today as we make our way across to Portaferry and up the Ards Peninsula to our next base at Helen's Tower between Bangor and Newtownards. Packed up and breakfasted, I'm impatient to be away, noting that the queue for the ferry has started to form up about 15 minutes before the scheduled departure time and the ferry is coming in to dock. I amuse myself while waiting for Hubby to be ready by heading out for a walk in the square to get some photos of this lovely village and of course The Cuan.

Strangford, looking over Strangford Lough to Portaferry

The Square, Strangford

The Cuan, Strangford (it's pronounced kew-an)

 The ferry completes boarding and departs just as Hubby is right to set out. This turns out to be a good thing because we have about 15 minutes to amuse ourselves.  We park along the waterfront and prowl around the jetty, then walk up for a better look at Strangford Castle. 

Looking back to Strangford from the jetty

Strangford Castle

We can only look from the outside but were glad we made the effort. I wonder when the cobbled path was laid. How many feet and styles of footwear have trod these rounded stones? Above the stone walls a dainty pink fuschsia has been used as a hedge. What a lovely juxtaposition in colour and texture. I'm loving the fuchsias everywhere. We don't want to miss another ferry so we figure it's time kto head down and join the queue.

The door, Strangford Castle

It's frustrating not to be able to get out on the ferry to get a photo of a particularly well placed tree on the point, the view of which is unfortunately totally blocked from my seat. A colleague who is from Co Down, told me Strangford Lough is beautiful. He's right.

Rolling off the ferry at Portaferry it is of course a very simple thing to follow the SatNav and head straight out of town, but my travel conscience pokes me and I request a return to at least take a little look at the village and get some photos. I draw some looks and even offers of assistance as I stand in the rain waiting for the right composition for a photo of the church or stranger still, a derelict house. People must think I'm very odd, but all I can see in the boarded windows and invading plant life is a restoration dream project.

We get back on the road, enjoying the fields recently harvested and the foraging birds they attract. A round tower in a scenic spot complete with birds demands a pause.

It's not long before we find ourselves turning into the parking lot at Kearney. It's raining lightly and we step out of the car taking car to avoid any puddles and set out to wander around the village. Most houses appear to be occupied, and there's small cars parked outside a few of the cottages. I head in past a tall building which takes me out to the sea front and a lawned walkway leading to the left towards an open green edged by white cottages and to the right to a walk along the coast. The shoreline is quite extraordinary. I've noticed in a number of places over the years that nature seems to bring colour together in ways that sometimes surprise, but always work. Here on the rocky shore, the tones in the wave-smoothed pebbles pick up the tones of the tidewash seaweed, then a shift of texture and colour in the rocks, laid down as sediment before being smashed and uplifted in a quite remarkable intricate consistency.

As I approach the green, I am struck by colour used with simplicity and confidence. White cottage, rich red/pink hydrangea highlighted by bright red door and a matched bench seat, the more subtle hues highlighted by a honeysuckle draping itself over the stone wall. They simply glow in the muted pallet of the grey day. Wonderful.

The grass is quite long and wet, I step gingerly to try to minimise the accumulation of water in my well ventilated shoes. A sudden burst of photo paranoia has me heading back to get back up photos on my phone. This has the added benefit that I can more easily and immediately share with friends on Whatsapp, confident that their artistic pedigree will be sure to lead to an appreciation of the scenes here.

By now I'm looking for Hubby and complete a circuit of the village before we meet up, share a few words of appreciation of the village and climb back into the car.. Just a little directional bickering before we're confidently on the way to Mount Stewart.
Passing through Greyabbey, our approaches take us along the waterfront, low tide revealing mud flats and flocks of geese. YES!! Are these migratory geese beginning to congregate?  Hubby parks in the handy car park and I retrieve both camera and binoculars and wander down through some rough vegetation, onto the rocks then pick my way over the rocky shore and sloped concrete footings of the road, to a spot where I have the light behind me. The birds call continuously to each other, what a lovely marker of the changing seasons. We have migratory birds in Australia of course, even around us in Sydney but they are movements of smaller bush birds that you see individually at certain times of year, we don't get these huge congregations of birds as assemble here on Strangford Lough, other than at some really remote spots in Northern Australia.

Come through the wall, there's spaces for you to do so. 

Brent Geese begin to arrive on the mudflats at Grey Abbey

I spot a couple of other people also looking at the birds and realise that there's handy gaps in the sea wall along the road and a footpath on the other side of the road, so it would be much simpler to come and go that way. I hadn't noticed that as we whizzed past in the car, but I certainly plan to use it for the return. Behind the shrubs which border the pedestrian walkway, there is a pretty little reservoir. I'm so glad we stopped. I have wanted to see overwintering birds and was hoping for the chance to see something new, having watched the Greylag geese flying in and landing on the Black Island in Scotland a few years ago. Back at the car I consult my bird guide. Yep, Brent Geese. Apparently a very large proportion of the world's Brent Geese overwinter on Strangford Lough. How absolutely wonderful.

We're now not far from Mount Stewart, though somehow we manage to miss the entrance and are obliged to turn around and go back, looking carefully lest we miss it again. The car park is quite busy, we've made quite good time though and are only slightly behind the suggestion in the manifesto. The lookout over the water for bird enthusiasts is closed today unfortunately. On the side of the building as we walk into the ticket office, a large and impressive mosaic of flying Brent Geese has been installed. I do hope the geese and their annual migration outlasts the mosaic!
Walking through the densely vegetated path I'm struck again by a curry-like fragrance in the air. I look around but can't see anything obvious. Hubby is behind me due to a need to return to the car for something or other. I look up. Oh! A eucalypt tree! As I expand my higher level observations, there's more eucalypts, lots of them in fact. Hubby catches up and I set him the challenge of identifying the fragrance in the air. It's like that plant you grow isn't it, he observes. Yep. Finally I have to tell him to look up too. Wow! They say that if you're arriving by ship to Australia, you smell it before you see it. Living there we rarely have opportunities to distinguish the fragrance of the trees due to low humidity, though in some cooler mountainous regions there's patches of forest that are very strongly fragrant. I guess too, when the fragrance of eucalypt bushland is all around you all the time, you just stop noticing it. It's quite surprising to find so many eucalypts here. It's quite novel for us to think of eucalypts as prestigious exotics.

First up, after a bit of a nose around the gift shop, is the tour of the house  which is presented as it was in the period of greatest activity - early in the 20th Century. The many achievements of Edith, Lady Londonderry are described to us. She does seem to have been a most remarkable and worthy woman.  Moving on we visit the portraits of various Stewarts and one Castlereagh for whom, no doubt, Castlereagh in Greater Sydney and indeed Castlereagh St in the centre of Sydney was named. Movers and shakers in world affairs.

At one point,  I am simply moved to stand in open mouthed shock. We are hearing about two brothers who are both in attendance at a really significant international conflab, The Congress of Vienna I believe it was. Following the events one of them was gifted a number of the chairs. Here are some of them around the room. Each has it's upholstery embroidered with the family crest of the arse that sat on it. Eventually it is explained that the embroidery was done AFTER the conference. I shut my mouth. I'd been standing there waiting for an opportunity to ask, thinking, Good lord, how long did they have to prepare for the event if they've embroidered the chairs like this. 😂

We've visited a few stately homes over the years, but it's not often I actually covet specific features or furniture on display. Here at Mount Stewart though, they have the most magnificent banks of lit china cabinets alongside a beautiful staircase. They are stunning. Writing this and doing a little more research on Viscount Castlereagh, I find he's quite an interesting and important historical character for Ireland having been instrumental in pushing through the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain. Didn't that go well in the long run.
It's a beautiful house and an interesting tour. The National Trust does a fabulous job of presenting their properties and ensuring an interesting visit for those who come and pay to help preserve them. It does help to be interested in history!
We now have as much time as we like to wander in the gardens and grounds. Most memorable is the Red Hand of Ulster in front of an Irish Harp in topiary, that we'd admired from inside the house. As the story goes it was planted by the woman of the house to remind her other half which of his many properties he was at. It could be urban myth we're told, but it does seem quite feasible to me. As I guess many women know, even in this day and age, husbands can be extraordinarily oblivious to decor or such things, especially when their preoccupation is with weighty affairs of State.

Hubby peers out at the Red Hand of Ulster

...and this is it. The Red Hand of Ulster

Having satisfied our curiosity in the formal garden areas, we consult our map as to the quickest way to get to the red squirrel hide. We backtrack through the garden and its ornate gate and set off around the lake, past a busy man who is intent on filling the air with the fragrance of freshly mown grass. We sit on a bench on the edge of the lake briefly while I fiddle with the camera, then we set off again, admiring the hydrangeas and the glorious shiny red banded bark of a now leafless cherry tree.

Red squirrel habitat

The path takes us into some obvious red squirrel habitat. Quiet, patience and keeping away from the windows are the keys to seeing the squirrels. This is made very clear on signage around about as you approach the hide. A woman with a kid in a pram, had earlier overtaken us, providing an incentive for our taking our time. She's heading back from the hide as we approach quietly. My expectations are lowered further still as we enter and find a serious man with some serious gear sitting patiently and silently on a seat well away from the large window overlooking a squirrel play gym of pine logs with feeder stations. We creep in without speaking. Just a slight nod of acknowledgement. The three of us sit quietly, watching out through the glass. But we are not alone. A tall woman is also here and she just doesn't seem capable of keeping still. She peers out the smaller windows, she creaks across the floor. "FFS would you just sit the F*&^ down woman" I think. After only a few minutes, she issues a silent command to the serious man and he packs up and they head off. If he's a birdwatcher, and he appears to be one, I sure hope he doesn't have to drag her around with him all the time.  We stay a bit longer but really, squirrels aren't stupid, they'll be crawling around those feeders after the grounds close and in the very early morning.
Consulting our map I do a rough assessment on my back and shoulders and we decide to head back to the lake and continue the circuit rather than continue on the wilderness squirrel walk. I'm not sure how we managed it, but before long we find ourselves at the White Stag Lawn. Oh. How did we do that?  Again the plantings include numerous eucalypt trees, someone must have been establishing a collection, they've certainly done a good job of making this little patch of Ireland look like Australia...  ...at least when the huge New Zealand flax plants elsewhere in the garden are not reminding me of the Kakariki parrots in Aotearoa that come in to feed on the flax seed heads. Who eats the seed heads here?

NZ Flax, seed spikes drooping in sorrow, missing the Kakariki parrots

When I think of the gardens we have seen on this trip in future, the one of the really outstanding impression is the hydrangeas. Everyone seems to love hydrangeas, different varieties, different colours, but you don't travel far without seeing a large flowering hydrangea. It makes me even more pleased that I have just planted a range of hydrangeas in a new section of garden at home. They will remind me of Ireland.

Back at the visitor centre we do a little shopping. Yes, I really do want those two very heavy little cast iron mice. They'll be a cute addition to the garden. I've been collecting cute animals in various media for the grandkids to find. On our way out we stop to check out the State coach and learn a few things  that fit in with the related discussion in the house tour. I didn't realise that all aristocratic families kept a State coach displaying the heraldry and status of their house. I guess this is because there is almost none of them still in existence, so they don't get talked about.
It's not far from Mount Stewart to Helen's Tower. We enjoy the sight of Scrabo Tower in the distance across the water or really at the moment, across the tidal mud flats. With a little time to kill until we meet up to be shown the way into the estate, we drive into Bangor (which appears to be pronounces Bang-ga) and do a little reccie for our dinner venue and the area in general, exploring as far as Groomsport.

Groomsport

We make our pre-arranged connection in the car park of the Clandeboye Lodge Hotel and drive in convoy into the Clandeboye Estate paying close attention to the turns as we climb up along dirt roads, through mature forest carefully avoiding skittling the walkers still passing through. After a while we turn into a little gravelled yard surrounded by rustic fencing intended to discourage the general hoi palloi from intruding into the precinct set aside for guests staying in the tower. Luggage inside and once we've been giving some fingers crossed instructions for the shower controls, we climb through four flights of narrow and well worn spiral staircase, stopping at each floor for guidance on the facilities, and a run down on a few house rules. On the roof, There's a table and chairs for when the weather is inviting. We admire the expansive views and identify landmarks near and far.  In the distance, Clandeboye House is pointed out along with the vast amount of land that is part of the estate.
We have a reservation in Bangor for dinner this evening so there's a limit to how long we can hang about enjoying the tower right now. Heading out for dinner, we go in convoy once again and we have a surprise. An awesome surprise. Yes, please do, lets take the shortcut! We are very glad we have the SUV upgrade and have good ground clearance, it would not be recommended in an ordinary sedan. Down the little shortcut we drive under the branch of the tree in Game of Thrones where they find the three hanging bodies. In the dim light the scene is very atmospheric. The production company certainly found some extraordinary spots for filming, this location is on a popular walking route, so I guess it's not as out of the way as it feels, and like all desirable filming sites, you can drive right up to it.
OK, so dinner is at Underground Dining and results are mixed. We started with some small tasting plates which, aside from simply making a poor choice for my own palette in one case, were pretty good overall.  I really must learn not to order things involving Brie and Cranberry. I know I don't like it. I dunno, somehow I just repeatedly figure it SHOULD be nice. Yeah, Nah*.  So, really there 's only one dish that warrants my staying out of bed to talk about it. Hubby's main. It looked so good a group arriving at the next table asked him what it was and half of them ordered the same. It was so far superior to any other thing that arrived at our table, that Hubby repeatedly observed. "I can't believe how much better than your meal mine was, you wouldn't think they came out of the same kitchen!"   No, no you wouldn't. Mine was decidedly average, chicken breast overcooked, everything else pretty pedestrian and yet, no great difference in price to Hubby's meal into which someone has poured a good deal of culinary artistry. A significant proportion of my outrage is that my meal has come with mash, whereas Hubby's meal has a supremely delicious potato bake thingy that appears to involve sliced potato and onion in nice proportions and a slathering of bechemel sauce on the top under the cheese. I would have been thrilled just to have a big serve of that on it's own! So, yeah, slightly disappointed in Underground Dining, it was a bit hit and miss.
I had recorded our route to in to Helen's Tower on the TomTom so we fuss about trying to see if that worked. It didn't. Luckily Hubby has a pretty much perfect recall of the route, so it's all good. We head inside and collapse on the bed. It's not the most comfortable bed. A bit hard, but at least not catastrophic. Helen's Tower itself is very atmospheric, very special. Hubby LOVES it!