Manchester - Belfast 🍀 18kms 🚶‍♀️

With 6hrs 45mins sleep under my belt thanks to luggage drop the night before and a warm showers host, I walked to the tram and travelled with many airport workers 😊

This is my Plan B after not being successful in obtaining a French visa.  No Tour de France for me but I will spend the next month cycle touring and exploring Country 21 on this trip - Northern Ireland which is a pretty amazing consolation prize.  

The scenery promises to be green and rugged, hilly and weather most likely coolish and unpredictable too.  There's a distinct lack of obvious campgrounds and so I'll have to work it out as I go along.  

I reached out to a warm showers host in Belfast who suggested taking my bike in bag & gear on the shuttle bus and rebuilding it in the city.

Sam met me at the bus terminal and we cycled to a friend's shop where we left our bikes and he took me on a walking tour through the city, city hall, old buildings, past buskers and over a bridge to the Titanic quarter.  The Titanic was built in Belfast.  There are all sorts of memorabilia and museums.  We went to the Titanic museum and exhibit, but at AUD$55 to enter, was outside my budget. Chatted with one of the guides called Sheila and she pointed out the free things to be enjoyed.  Then she whispers ‘come with me’! Off to the lift we go and she sneaks us to the top floor to show the view down to the docks where Titanic was built and they have marked the shape, to scale. Plus the route taken marked out with a steel inlay into coloured pavers indicating land and sea.  This would be hard to visualise from the ground level.  How lovely of her.

Then to the Titanic Hotel which has been built in the former planning building where the ships were designed.

Then to an amazing busy Community cafe where you choose how much you pay for food & drinks via a QR code. 

We collected our bikes and rode to Sam's place and he had prepared a beautiful vegetable curry with fresh salad followed by watermelon.

After dinner we walked a circle route to Belfast castle.

Sam showed me the divides between Catholic and Protestant in neighbourhoods and I was naive to the fact that this divide still exists, that there are still huge fences separating neighbourhoods, cctv on known hotspots where trouble occurs etc. 

Sam was generous with his time on a day off.  Rain coming down now.

A great intro to Northern Ireland.