More Adventures in Belfast

A few years ago I made a flying visit to Belfast, tempted by the opportunity to see one of my favourite bands, The Adventures, live for the first time – at their final ever gig! Thankfully, that label of final proved to be a marketeer’s over enthusiastic spin. The band have made a few appearances since then and were part of an incredible NHS tribute performance in 2020 with rewritten lyrics.

I tried to see The Adventures again in early 2022 but that gig was cancelled (as Omicron swept across Northern Ireland, prompting new restrictions on indoor events that came into force at the end of 2021). Thankfully, the situation today is almost back to pre-pandemic normality. Once again I could step into the gorgeous interior of the Belfast Empire Music Hall and enjoy a super 15 song set from The Adventures.

The Adventures at the Belfast Empire

The set (in order) gave us Feel the raindrops; Love in chains; Scarlet; Drowning in the sea of love; Your greatest shade of blue; Monday Monday; Send my heart; Impossible you; Walk away Renee; Hold me now; Hangin tree; Broken land; and Washington deceased. After a brief pause in proceedings we got a two song finale with Sweet burning love followed by Two rivers. I’d like to claim that was the result of a good memory, but actually I took a snap of the set list on the wall (though I did at least note that the last two songs on the setlist were swapped around).

In my eyes The Adventures are one of the most underrated bands of the past 40 years. I think the 16 year old who popped in to the record store to buy a copy of the album ‘The Sea of Love’ in 1988 would be rather astonished to discover his much older self still dancing along to a live performance of the soundtrack of his youth in the 2020s!

It was an adventure in itself getting to the venue last night with high winds and heavy rain, but what a terrific night it proved to be. We stumbled out of the venue just before midnight with huge smiles on our faces. I was still reliving the gig in my head as I finally succumbed to sleep in the early hours of the morning.

Day trip to Cultra

On our first day back in Belfast we headed out to Cultra, a straightforward 15-20 minute journey by train from the city centre. It couldn’t be easier at the other end – the exit of the station is directly opposite the Ulster Transport Museum and the Ulster Folk Museum is only a ten minute walk away. The combination offers plenty of variety and makes for a super day out.

The Ulster Transport Museum was much more extensive than I had expected, easily filling two hours. We spent the first hour in the rail gallery, which covers the distinctive path that the railways took in Ireland across both sides of the border. A number of unusual and rare locomotives help illustrate this story.

Great Southern Railways Class 800 steam locomotive Maeḋḃ with Christmas lights!

Among the star exhibits is the steam locomotive 800 ‘Maeḋḃ’, one of three B1a class steam locomotives built at Inchicore works, Dublin, in 1939. The class was the most powerful constructed in Ireland and used on the route between Dublin and Cork, where she broke the existing records. It was to be a short reign – diesels entered service in 1950 and ‘Maeḋḃ’ was withdrawn in 1958.

At the other end of the scale you have the small but extraordinary steam locomotive no. 20 from the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. Invented by Samuel Geoghegan, this locomotive was designed to cope with the challenges of the sloping tramway system in the brewery (after conventional locomotives had proven wanting and damaged the track). It’s an unusual design which features cylinders above the boiler, turning a high-level crankshaft. No. 20 was retired in 1956 and the tramway itself closed in 1975.

Other wonderful locomotives on display included CIE diesel locomotive no. B113 (Inchicore Railway Works, 1950), the oldest surviving mainline diesel locomotive in Ireland; BNCR (Portstewart Tramway Company) locomotive no. 2; and NIR Hunslet diesel locomotive no. 102 Falcon, used on the cross-border service between Belfast and Dublin.

The display boards also highlight other extraordinary locomotives that once existed in Ireland, such as the monorail steam locomotives used on the Listowel & Ballybunion Railway (operated from 1888, scrapped in the 1920s, but with an operational diesel replica built 2003) and Oliver Bulleid’s experimental turfburning steam locomotive (completed 1957, scrapped 1965).

The museum has many more stories to tell, in galleries that seemingly cover every form of transport you can imagine from horse drawn carts to DeLorean cars. Among the highlights from the rest of the collection I would have to pick out the silver Shorts SC.1 prototype, constructed in Belfast in the 1950s. It has the distinction of being the first British fixed-wing VTOL aircraft and helped shape the future of VTOL aircraft.

Shorts SC.1 prototype

At the time of our visit there was a modest exhibition ‘Celtic Wave: A History of Surfing in Ireland‘ (on till Sunday 9th July 2023) which explores the development of surfing as a sport from the 1960s to the present day. I would have liked to have seen a bit more to this, but was particularly fascinated by the photos showing pioneer surfers overcoming the lack of affordable surfboards in Ireland by creating their own.

In the afternoon we made our way over to the Ulster Folk Museum and spent the next couple of hours exploring the remarkable collection of 50+ buildings that have been arranged across the 170 acre site armed with the maps they provide upon entry. Some buildings are replicas, while others have been carefully moved and reconstructed brick by brick (as a photograph showing one building with every brick numbered testifies).

I’ve been to a few open air museums of this type, but I’m always amazed at the sheer variety of buildings on offer – and just how many distinctive buildings there are from one country to another. Among the many delights to be discovered along the way were a Presbyterian Meeting House, with its spartan, organless interior; a bicycle repair shop; a replica coal yard from the early 1900s; some astonishing sculptures in the Basket Maker’s workshop; freshly baked soda bread in the Old Rectory; and the atmospheric classroom of the National School.

Interior of the National School

However, the unexpected highlight of our visit to the Folk Museum proved to be the Picture House from Gilford. This was a hay loft/store converted to be a silent cinema from around 1909 to 1931, most likely operating illegally. The information boards conjured up some of the magic of this haphazard family-run cinema, with hot water bottles to hire for the better off, the owner’s wife on piano, and their children on hand to read out captions to those unable to read.

I’ve never thought of cinemas as dangerous places but the display boards explain the risks of early cinema projection (with their combination of highly flammable film and flame powered projectors) and how commonplace cinema fires were. Absolutely fascinating.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the two museums at Cultra and would heartily recommend both. The Folk museum would probably be much more pleasant in more clement weather but it certainly made us appreciate the appeal of a roaring fire to counter the cold and damp in some of the properties. As the exhibition at the City Hall highlights, Belfast has quite a proliferation of different words for rain, probably with good reason!

Gallery

Back to Belfast

A quick and slightly bumpy hop over the Irish Sea delivered us to Belfast City airport on a rather wet and wild night (perhaps chancing my luck a bit with a seat in row 13 on Friday 13th). It was an easy ride into the city centre on the Airport Express 600 bus, a journey of just 7 minutes, though I then managed to squander our rain-avoidance with a near 360 degree circumnavigation of our hotel in the pouring rain while trying to find a way in!

As daylight broke we could see the view that had eluded us last night, including the railway bridge over the Lagan and the landmark Samson and Goliath cranes of the Harland and Wolff shipyard. It all looked very calm, but we knew that the forecast suggested more wind and rain was on its way.

A view over the Lagan

The original plan for our trip had centred on a visit to the Titanic Museum but when we discovered that was closed for major refurbishment works we came up with a Plan B that involved a walk around the maritime mile, a day trip to Cultra, a visit to the superb exhibition in Belfast City Hall and a meal at Scalini (a restaurant we found last time and absolutely loved).

Highlights of our wander along the maritime mile included ‘The Big Fish‘ (John Kindness, 1999), a 10 metre long salmon sculpture made up of ceramic tiles that reflect the history of the city and help celebrate the regeneration of the area; a series of stained glass panels depicting scenes from Game of Thrones; ‘Titanic Kit‘ (Tony Stallard, 2009), a bronze and steel sculpture of the RMS Titanic depicted as an oversized airfix model kit, celebrating the construction of the ship in Belfast; the White Star Line’s SS Nomadic, tender to the RMS Titanic; the Titanic slipways; and the Great Light, which incorporates the lenses originally made in 1887 for a lighthouse off Donegal.

Our wanders also took us past the Samson and Goliath cranes, with some display boards nearby helpfully explaining their history. The cranes were built in 1969 (Goliath) and 1974 (Samson) respectively, and run on a 800m track with a loaded weight of 4,000 tons. Today, they are scheduled as historic monuments.

The exhibition inside Belfast City Hall

After completing a walk around the maritime mile we took the train from Titanic Quarter station to Cultra and spent the best part of a day exploring the two museums there (Ulster Transport Museum and Ulster Folk Museum).

Finally, a visit to the free exhibition at the Belfast City Hall provided an excellent introduction to the history of the city and some aspects that probably fox visitors, like local pronunciation, idioms and syntax. It was fascinating to see a chest of drawers that was meant to have been installed on the Titanic, but never made it in time; the collection of caskets given to those given the freedom of the city; and the rather ugly table that was used for the signing of the Ulster Covenant. We spent around an hour and twenty minutes exploring the 16 rooms in the exhibition.

There’s still plenty that we need to come back for, but it was good to see a bit more of the city than we managed on our last flying visit.

A little practical information. Our bus tickets between the city centre and Belfast City Airport cost £2.10. To get about Belfast and Cultra we bought Zone 1 iLink cards from Translink at £6 each for a one day pass, which covered us for all the train journeys we needed to make (including some short hops within the city centre to help dodge a fresh burst of rain). Admission to Belfast City Hall was free. The museums at Cultra cost £10.89 per adult for each museum, i.e. £21.78 per adult for both museums.

Gallery

A flying visit to Belfast

Our visit to Belfast for the gig was a short one, arriving just before 1pm on the Saturday and leaving just before 12pm on the Sunday. I don’t think I’ve ever flown into a city and stayed less than 23 hours before, but I’ve seen enough to know that I will have to come back to do justice to the city and the surrounding countryside. Even from the windows of the airportlink bus I could see sights that I wanted to come back to take a closer look at, such as the striking celtic cross on the facade of St Anne’s Cathedral. I was mentally compiling a list for the next visit before we had even made it to the city centre for our first…

As the gig we had come for was taking place at the Belfast Empire Music Hall we had booked a hotel in the Queen’s Quarter. The friendly and welcoming IBIS proved to be the perfect choice, just a short walk away from the venue and
the terrific family-run restaurant Scalini on Botanic Avenue. It is no exaggeration to say that Scalini served up some of the best Italian food I have eaten anywhere and easily rivaled the best meals of the past twelve months. No wonder they were queue outside the door to get a table when we left!

The extent of our sightseeing would be a couple of hours exploring the Ulster museum and the neighbouring botanic gardens, about five minutes walk south from the hotel. The museum offered far more than we expected and there would have been still more to see had we not reached saturation point.

One of the willow dragons created by Bob Johnston, basket maker at the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum

Highlights of our visit to the Ulster Museum included the last weekend for the 137th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Ulster Academy which had plenty of brilliant exhibits to admire (including the memorable and amusing tale revealed on the back of the exhibit What my cat ate today) and the willow dragons that hang from the rafters.

The Ulster Museum had an incredible amount of history to reveal, much of it unfamiliar to me, such as the tale of the ships from the Spanish Armada that foundered off the Ulster coast as they attempted to escape around Scotland and back to Spain via the North Atlantic. The treasures (including a golden salamander) from one of these ships, The Girona, help bring the story to life in a fascinating display.

More recent history is tackled in The Troubles And Beyond exhibition which was opened in March 2018 to mark the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

The exhibition places a strong emphasis on the human cost of the conflict. This is really brought home with one of the most ordinary exhibits, an otherwise unremarkable lined notebook that was used as the visitors’ guestbook at the Ulster American Folk Park, signed by a 12 year old schoolboy who died hours later in the Omagh bombing without having the chance to grow up. Other artifacts on display range from a bomb disposal robot to a remembrance wreath not laid at Enniskillen. Plenty to reflect on as we left the museum behind.

Adventures in Belfast

The most heavily played album of my teenage years was The Sea of Love by The Adventures, a terrific rock band from Northern Ireland formed in the early 1980s. I hadn’t heard of them until their breakthrough song, Broken Land, hit the UK charts in 1988 but I was instantly hooked. That track made it to number 20 in the UK singles chart and should have opened the doors to greater commercial success but somehow that was never meant to be. Nevertheless, there was plenty for the fan to feast on with four terrific albums.

The Adventures

It has taken me some 30 years or so from that initial hook to get my act together and see them play live at what was billed as their final shows as a band at the Belfast Empire. It doesn’t sound as though that is quite the case now, with the lead singer Terry Sharpe saying in recent television and newspaper interviews that you never close the door. Anyway, it did the trick – it got me on a plane to go and discover for myself just what a terrific band they are playing live. Better late to the party than never!

The Belfast Empire Music Hall, based in a converted Victorian church, has character in abundance and proved the perfect venue for the sold out gig. There were clearly plenty of long time fans and friends in the audience, adding to the feel of an intimate gathering. As well as a core of support from Belfast there were fans that had travelled from Denmark, Germany and the Phillipines. The atmosphere built up nicely in anticipation of the 10.45pm appearance of The Adventures on the stage.

The night really got going with the opener of Love in chains, followed by a set-list spread across all four albums that served as a good reminder (as if it were needed) of the strength of their back catalogue. Marvelous songs like Send my heart, Feel the raindrops, Hold me now, Your greatest shade of blue and Washington deceased. The live performance of Broken Land was as thrilling a moment as you could hope for. There was also the surprise of a new song that they have only played live a couple of times before and the wonderful choice of Two rivers that they had been persuaded to play for the last song of the night.

If that was the end, then it was a great way to finish, but I am taking encouragement from Terry’s ‘See you next time!’. If there is a next time, I think it will be impossible to resist.

The Belfast Empire

One of the quirkiest facts about Broken Land was that it ended up being the most played track on BBC Radio One in 1988. You might think it unlikely that a song that only made it midway up the top 40 could have achieved this, but it was released early in the year and had something of a slow burn. I guess the promoters were working very hard to make it a success too, though that’s harder to quantify.

The track spent 12 weeks in the charts, slowly but steadily progressing upwards in a relatively unusual pattern for the time. It finally peaked at 20 on 21st May 1988 a week or so after their appearance on Top of the Pops. I recall it being pushed on the radio and tv fairly heavily, so presumably someone at the BBC was a big fan. I certainly didn’t tire of hearing it!

The success of Broken Land didn’t follow through to the second single from the The Sea of Love, probably because this was released after the album. The album made it to number 30 in the album charts. I picked up a copy on cassette tape and it got plenty of my play in my room that summer, especially as a welcome distraction from my exam revision!

The albums The Sea of Love (1988) and Theodore and Friends (1985) have been re-issued in expanded form by Cherry Red Records with a rather splendid set of sleeve notes about the history of the band and the recording of the albums.