Historic sites and culture

As you walk along the historic walls that surround the old City of Derry, also known as Londonderry, experience a deep sense of history. What a panoramic setting! Massive walls almost 7.9m high and 9m wide take you around the only remaining completely walled City in Ireland and one of the finest examples of Walled Cities in Europe. You are travelling over a city boundary which has witnessed truly momentous events down the centuries.

Enjoy the night life! Derry is a city that knows how to let its hair down and loves to make visitors feel very much at home. Great pubs, good company and loads of music are present in abundance. Whether it's an Irish music 'seisiun' in a traditional pub, chilling out to the sounds of jazz, enjoying a classical concerto or even a West End show at the impressive Millennium Forum, or lapping up the atmosphere in a nightclub this is the place for you.

Perched on the summit of Greenan Mountain, Grianan of Aileach is one of the most impressive stone ring forts in Ireland. The ring fort dates from the early Christian period but the earthworks that surround the fort are believed to date back almost 4,000 years to the Neolithic period. Gaze and ponder on the antiquity of the place and the many remarkable tales associated with it. This is, indeed, an ancient spot... it was one of only five Irish locations marked on the 2nd century map of the world by Ptolemy of Alexandria.

Continue into County Tyrone and visit the inspired Ulster American Folk Park that takes you back in time to the early days of Irish emigration to the USA. Set in picture postcard rolling hills, the park covers 100 acres and gives a fascinating insight to the family background of the generations that were to shape the New World.

Travel on through the Fermanagh Lakeland, hire a day boat – or a cruiser for a week – and discover the joy of messing about on the water in Ireland’s Lake District. Pick up some Parian China at Belleek before heading into Bundoran, Mullaghmore or Donegal town – all synonymous with Irish family holidays at the seaside.

Before heading back to Belfast stop off in one of the stylish Country House Hotels in Yeat’s Country, McGahern’s Leitrim, Kavanagh’s Monaghan or Swift’s Armagh and read their works in their home setting.

Literary tour

Literary pilgrimages explain much of how the writers saw the world and how the landscape influenced their writing. They take the pilgrim into wonderful places that might otherwise have been missed –

Belfast and Co Down for CS Lewis and the Bronte inspiration.

Sligo and Leitrim for W B Yeats and John McGahern;

Derry/Londonderry for Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney and Jennifer Johnston

Fermanagh and Monaghan for Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett and Patrick Kavanagh.

There is something about the Irish country side that stimulates fantasy and the ability to create great stories. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Joyce’s The Dubliners and CS Lewis Chronicles of Narnia are all proud chapters in a tradition of story telling that can be traced back to the Bards and some great epic poetry such as the Cattle Raid of Cooley.

Belfast City Council have taken advantage of the peace of recent years to establish a CS Lewis Trail through the City.

Belfast International airport lies close to the shores of Lough Neagh – the largest inland lake in the UK. At nearby Toome you will see the great fishery for eels that the Nobel poet, Seamus Heaney, celebrated in more than one poem. At Bellaghy you can visit The Seamus Heaney Centre where manuscripts and effects belonging to the poet are on display.

Further South in County Down , enjoy the marvellous scenery of the Mountains of Mourne - celebrated in song by Percy French and the region where the father of the Brönte sisters learned the art of story-telling from his father and which is reputed to be the inspiration for Narnia.
Further south in Co. Monaghan is Inniskeen, birthplace and burial place of the poet Patrick Kavanagh. Kavanagh's life and times are commemorated in the old church there, converted to a museum in his honour.

Just an hour and a half north west of BELFAST International Airport is Derry/Londonderry. Derry is the home or birthplace of writers who have established international reputations. They include Brian Friel, whose play The freedom of the city is set in modern Derry and George Farquhar who moved to London in the 17th century. The novelist Jennifer Johnston, has lived there for many years and Frank McGuinness, from nearby Buncrana in Co. Donegal, has set some of his plays in the city.

The wife of a 19th century Bishop of Derry, Mrs C F Alexander, may not have been the greatest of poets but her hymns are amongst the best loved of any in the English language: Once in Royal David's City, All things bright and beautiful and many others were written and first heard in the old city.

Less that 2 hours drive of Belfast International you are on the Atlantic Coast in Donegal or Sligo. WB Yeats adopted Sligo as his spiritual home and Sligo has honoured him for decades. Pubs and hotels are named after Yeats and, much more importantly, signposts all over the county, and its neighbouring Leitrim, show the way to places, large and small, whose names, legends and landscapes he used in his poetry.

A lovely lake drive heads eastwards by the shores of Lough Gill and signposts to the Lake Isle of Innisfree, the inspiration of one of Yeats's best-known and most beautiful poems. Then the road crosses the county border to Leitrim and Dromahair, a village which figures in many of the poems.

Travel through the magical valley of Glencar to Drumcliff Churchyard, in the shade of the precipitous Ben Bulben, and the grave of Yeats in the old churchyard.

In neighbouring Fermanagh the county town of Enniskillen boasts the school where two of Ireland greatest playwrights developed their skills – Portora Royal School educated both Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde.

Further South visit the lakeside village of Cootehall, Co Roscommon where John McGahern spent his early years in the police station where his father was the senior officer. East of Carrick is Mohill, which became famous as his home for the last twenty years of his life. There he lived and worked on a small farm beside a lake until shortly before his death in the spring of 2006.

For more information go to www.discoverireland.com/north or www.derryvisitor.com