Experience Belfast

19/10/2026

No room for Elvis unfortunately but a fair reflection.

19/10/2026

Good morning on this cold, crisp, beautiful autumnal day. I love the metallic, blue sheen to Belfast Lough and the mix of other colours, fading orange, green and the shadow giving way to light.

From the train, I walk to Greggs for Raymond’s Bacon Roll. I know the ‘Wee Girl from Greggs’ who is probably in her early 30s with a couple of kids but that’s part of what getting older is. Everyone is looking younger. We engage in conversation. She asks me how I am which can be fatal with a lot of Belfast men but I feel great and tell her so.

The conversation cartwheels into a sudden realisation that most of life is mundane. It’s filled with average Mondays where nothing exceptional happens, so the trick is to enjoy these mundane days. To brighten a gray day with flowers and to be buoyed from the view from the train.

I love this view. It’s a regular pot pourri of a scene, a decent enough metaphor for a day and this living game. The shadows and gray giving way to colour and sky like tulips illuminating a room.

08/09/2026

This is something I wrote a few years back but have rewritten slightly to include Dolly Parton. I still think of Dallas.

Today’s tour with Dallas and his daughter Kara from the States. They’re Anabaptists which sounded alarm bells with me, I was thinking ‘foot washing baptists’ and the reality of certain types of religion as described in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, “A bible in some men’s hand is worse than a wh***ey bottle in others”.

Belfast is awash with fundamentalists, alcoholics and addicts. People seeking salvation and escape to a new world bathed in a light reserved only for the righteous. For the addicted, there is no salvation, just the escape offered from the neck of a bottle or the point of a syringe. I’m wary of religion, I don’t trust it, I don’t like the type of people it attracts, although the money seems good. I prefer my humans flawed; people who smoke and drink and curse. If Jesus came to Belfast, I’d like to think he’d come back as a Postman, b**r in hand, shouting the odds on a picket line but he probably wouldn’t make it that far. He’d be nailed to a cross outside the City Hall within a few hours. I’m very sceptical of the Christian fundamentalism I encounter here. I get approached by them constantly in the city centre, pamphlet in hand, steel in the eye and i’m not sure what in the heart. My response is generally the same, “You shouldn’t have to tell me you’re a Christian, I should be able to see that you are.”

Initially, I was wary of Dallas. I wasn’t sure what he was but I get a sense of people quickly. You need to, you have to read the group; to keep people engaged, to watch for signs of tiredness or boredom, to discern what is appropriate or not. Points made gently and with empathy hit harder than the bullet thump of certainty I can’t stand in others. Dallas was miles ahead of me. He was shrouded in humanity and empathy. His eyes spoke of loss. He could see and understand Belfast because he’d an understanding of the human condition. I really enjoyed being in his and his daughter’s company, the way you do when you encounter the better part of the human condition. I felt ‘blessed’ to have met them. We’d a wonderful tour. I took their picture at the Security Gates, a clunking metaphor for their journey from bereavement back to life. I came home and looked up the Anabaptists’ beliefs. Most adhere to a literal interpretation of the Sermon of the Mount, which teaches against hate, killing, violence, taking oaths, participating in use of force or any military actions, and against participation in civil government. Not being tied to power, they have been persecuted and massacred by catholics and other protestants. My ignorance had led to judgement but such is the way of the world.

Today was good for me. It reminded me that despite my best intentions I still have my prejudices albeit of the liberal variety. I’m changing, I like to change. I’m open to good from whatever direction it comes from, be they believers or not. I wish I believed in God, I really do. There have been times in my life when I needed that comfort and support but I’m not a believer. I don’t begrudge those that are. I’ve met too many people of faith whose decency and humanity shines from them and brings light to this world. I suppose that’s why people were so affected by the loss of the greatest Dolly Parton. She brought light and libraries. If there were more people in this world like Dallas and Dolly, it would be a far better place.

# Belfast

03/09/2026

New Blog on the dark art of tourism here:

Belfast's Peace Walls — still standing, still dividing. A local guide who lived through the Troubles explains why walking to the Walls beats a bus or taxi tour every time.

16/07/2026

12 miles from Belfast, 20 minutes by train, and around six degrees in winter. Helen's Bay is Belfast's open secret for cold water swimmers. Check out my blog:



https://experiencebelfast.com/cold-water-swimming-belfast/

28/06/2026

Saturday night and the town is swarmed. Memories of drinking nights, navigating to bars that offer safe harbour from menacing empty streets. At Central Station, I’m engulfed by a group of younger people around 8 in total. The lads are trying to soothe a situation between the girls by saying things like, “Calm the f**k down!” One girl storms off, the others let her go and when one eventually catches up you can taste the toxicity between them. I walk on. I walk to the Ulster Hall to see Bill Burr. My phone is put in a pouch so I’ve used a screen .

Bill is angry, he is astute and very funny imo. He normally plays arenas but advertised a pop up gig during the week and miraculously I secured the second last ticket right at the back. I’m looking forward to it. I don’t know a lot about Bill save that he’s from Boston but with that, his red hair (now departed) and anger, I suspect he has a fair chunk of Irish heritage.

He doesn’t disappoint. ‘When is America going to stop being the schoolyard bully demanding other kids’ lunch money?’ He skewers our hypocrisy, mentions the Tuam babies. He’s also incredibly screwed up, more so than me and I thought I was major league. He’s managed to turn this into a career, sanctuary in a spot light as opposed to sanctuary in drugs and alcohol.

Reluctantly I’ve to leave a little early to catch a train. I skim around a group of lads exiting a bar. Drink has been taken, a phrase reminiscent of court reports. This is not a joyful, fun inebriation, it’s tense and frustrated, one of the lads is muttering, ‘For f**k’s sake’ repeatedly under his breath. The tension mingles with the humidity, static and charged. For a lot of people, Saturday night’s were never fun.

A few year’s ago on a tour, I described Belfast as ‘hard’. An American psychologist on the tour responded that when she heard that phrase she interpreted it as ‘disfunctional’.

I walk on skirting some drunks slumped on the ground and find sanctuary on the train. It is littered with the debris of previous celebratory passengers, crisps and cans littered on the ground like the syringes near Kelly’s Cellars or the human beings I’d just walked past.

15/06/2026

Myself and Raymond O’Regan pictured yesterday at First Presbyterian Church on Rosemary Street. In his hand, Raymond holds his sign announcing to the world that the church is closed whilst he goes to mass each day at St Mary’s. His old sign was a bit dilapidated and the people at First Church made him a new one like the good Protestants they are.

All my tours finish at the church which is my favourite place in the city. It’s a beautiful space but what it represents is even more important; humanity and rationality over prejudice. Thomas McCabe from the church successfully opposed the formation of the Belfast Slave Ship Company. Members set up schools, libraries and hospitals in the late 1700s when Belfast was once the ‘Boston or Athens of the North.’ The Church describes itself as liberal, ‘new light Presbyterians’. The fundamentalist despise the Church and its members because fundamentalists trade in binary certainties. The older you get the more you realise, ‘There are no easy answers’.

We’re looking our age in the photo. Raymond’s mobility is not what it was and my fine, fly away hair has …flown away. Raymond still has a full head of hair. I find this deliberately provocative. A few weeks back, someone offered me a seat on a bus! I was affronted but it was an act of kindness.

This day last week in Belfast a pogrom was enacted; people of colour were attacked, houses and cars burnt. We live in some dark times but there are always points light. From thousands attending an anti racism rally on Saturday, to a cantankerous historian who will not be defined by his conditioning to a kind person on a bus giving up a seat to a bald, old git. The light will out.

https://experiencebelfast.com/blog-catholic-historian-protestant-church/

10/06/2026

Excited to share my first blog looking at things to do outside the main tourist trail. The first focuses on Belfast Castle - hopefully it works:

https://experiencebelfast.com/blog-hidden-belfast/

Castles with views to rival the Bay of Naples, gardens full of cats, and a bus from the city centre. Belfast has been hiding this from you.

25/05/2026

20/05/2026