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.

Banbridge - Portadown

Banbridge to Portadown

Bear right at Banbridge.  This is the monument to local explorer Francis Crozier.  He also gave his name to a crater on the Moon.

We left the town via the muddy Huntly Wood.  No path but no problem to Brian.

It was wet today, so plenty of excuses for a coffee stop.  There's nothing quite like being happy at work; this is Mary, in her smashing cafe - Gilberry Fayre. 

Well known sports journalist Dave McKibbin interviews a future star of NI running.

Time for some culture...  The memorial in Tullylish Church to the grandfather of WB Yeats, who was rector there.  Yeats Junior the poet once wrote: 'Tread softly because you tread on my dreams'.  Not easy when you are wearing size 12 muddy running shoes.  

The old football pitch in Gilford. It is claimed that Mancester City legend Bert Trautmann used to play here when he was housed in a local PoW camp in 1945.  

  
Gilford Mill - this place produced over £1m worth of linen in 1866.  That was serious money back then.

Don't know who benefited from all that money but it certainly wasn't these bare-footed mill children.

Dunbarton House home of  the Gilford Mill owners.  JEP McMaster left this house to become England's worst ever test cricketer.  He played one match and only lasted one ball - that was the full story of his career.

Moyallon Quaker meeting house.  A wonderful old building once visited by Elizabeth Fry the great social reformer and member of the chocolate family.  Today it was visited by two wet old gits.

Moyallon House where, according to Michael Gray's book 'Blood Relative', Tsarevich Alexei stayed after escaping Russia. 

The Bann in Portadown.  Long ago, you could have taken a boat from here to Wales, via the Newry Canal and Irish Sea.  We just went home by train, via two more coffee shops.
  

Hilltown - Banbridge

Hilltown to Banbridge

A bad weather forecast put off the younger members of our squad today.  Typical!  Only two of us OAPs made it to the start line for the 16 mile trek.  First stop along the river was the derelict Ballycoshone mill.

Mice, in cages, get food when they do this - no such luck for us.

Clonduff Church on a minor road near Rathfriland.  This remote church was the unlikely home of Margaret Byers, the founder of Victoria College in Belfast.

A heated argument about Brexit - not sure who won.

Ballyroney Station is one of my favourite old buildings.  It's hard to imagine steam trains calling at this remote spot 70 years ago. Who got on, who got off?

Two goats....

Six goats.

Not what you normally expect to find along the River Bann.  This is apparently the set for Game of Thrones (Series 6).  Brian and I are not in it.

The Downshire Arms Hotel in Banbridge.  It's almost as old as us and a fine place to end today's run.

Spelga - Hilltown

Spelga to Hilltown

Another year and time for a new running blog.  At 4:00am one night in January, I heard the rainwater lashing against my bedroom window and the idea suddenly appeared as a vision - run the River Bann. It's just 100 miles long, including around Lough Neagh, so we should be back in time for Christmas.

Colin, Brian and MOD were mad enough to join me today.  We set off from Hilltown on a sunny March morning.  The highest point of the town is a fish - maybe a good omen for a river run?

The River Bann story starts at its source on Slieve Muck in the Mournes. This took some finding but Brian was able to verify the spot by tasting the water.

I've taken a bottle full of this holy water which we will add to the tea at a Victoria parkrun.  It's good stuff for runners, much more healthy than the usual Proseco so favoured by some of the women there.

We got down from the mountain, with a lot of slipping (wrong shoes), and made for Spelga Dam.  What a beautiful place this is.  I've given up on mountain running (too messy and dangerous for an old man) but still love jogging along these high roads through the Mournes.


This sheep was surveying an interesting thing below Spelga Dam ....

....... the Magnetic Hill, where it looks like you are going uphill but you are actually going down. There's money to be made here on bets - so bring your friends along one day.




It was then all downhill to Hilltown  - named after the Hills and not the hills, you probably need to be Irish to understand that.

 Brian decided to take to the water at this point and we fished him out again downstream in Hilltown.








The tradition is to end each of these runs with a plate full of food.  Here Michael demolishes the local speciality - a Gutbuster Fry - at K's cafe in Hilltown.   

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DISCLAIMER

Participation in runs by invitation only. All participants are to ensure their general health and physical fitness to complete the planned distance, and are to exercise their individual appropriate caution for all sections of the route including road traffic awareness. Any reference, in run blogs or other published material, to access over privately owned land should not be taken as an indication of a right of public access; in all such cases, check with the relevant landowner. 

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