Portadown - Oxford Island - Lurgan

Portadown to Oxford Island

Leaving the Upper River Bann today on our journey up Lough Neagh.

Before reaching Craigavon, we passed the Seagoe Hotel.  I used to be banned from here for having hair that was too long. Never liked C&W music anyway, so blasted out my own music from the car park in protest.

We then entered a surreal running route called Rushmere Shopping Centre.  Runs certainly weren't like this in the past (no women).

Things got much worse!

After an eternity, we escaped Rushmere and ran around the Craigavon lakes.

Never done learning on these runs - Colin discovers that Portadown pigs don't eat grass.

Mansell the cyclist catches up with us in a tunnel designed for midgets.

Bad news nearing Lough Neagh, the first of about a million mayflies mounts an attack.

At last, relative safety from flies, hungry pigs and women's clothes shops. Colin meets an old friend at Oxford Island cafe.

Portadown - Bannfoot

Portadown to Bannfoot

With some sadness, today saw the last leg of the Upper Bann. It was a straight slog out to the Bannfoot (locally pronounced Bann Fut) on the shore of Lough Neagh.  The first few miles included this little known path hidden in the trees beside the motorway.

A lone angler on the river at 7:00am; have people no work to go to? The smudge on the photo is a mayfly, millions of these little pests live around here at this time of the year - thankfully, they have no mouths.

I'd read about this sculpture at Derrytrasna.  It's called Running the Lines; looks a bit like a runner having a picnic but it's really an eel fisherman.

Approaching the 'lost' village of Charlestown.  It's at the very end of a long straight road; many people moved away from here when the Bann ferry closed. The only living thing that I saw was a bored-looking black cat.

In the village: an old phone box, a sign to say what it's for, an election poster featuring a woman with nicer hair than that man Trump.

The ferry was little more than a raft and a rope pulled by an old man. I remember being told that he didn't much like being woken up by guys going home from the pub in the wee small hours.

The end of the road.... 

.... there's no ferry nowadays, so it was a 7 mile run back to Portadown to continue the run up the eastern side of the Lough.