Photos:
Reed and labourer's cottages in Ballycultra Village
Rectory and church, Ballycultra
Soda farls in rectory kitchen
Modest farm at folk museum
Prosperous farm at folk museum
Friday, November 23, 2007
Bangor
Thanksgiving Round-up: I was unable to get pumpkin in any form, but did locate some organic butternut squash at the store. It turned out to be indistinguishable from pumpkin once it was baked into a pie using the traditional Libby’s recipe that I found online. Just halve the butternut the long way, bake it flesh down on a cookie sheet about an hour at 350, scoop out the insides, discard the seeds, and puree the flesh in a food processor, then follow your pie recipe. Presto! The turkey roasted up beautifully on a broiler pan with a big foil tent over it tightly sealed around the edges; the dressing that I made with two different kinds of bread along with onions, celery, wild mushrooms, sausage, bacon, and sage was yummy, the mashed potatoes made with local spuds were quite tasty; the glazed carrots – also local – were sweet and delicious as a substitute for sweet potatoes (which I really hate). Unable to find fresh frozen cranberries, I had to purchase a jar of Ocean Spray cranberry sauce. But I’ll admit, although it wasn’t my own, it was pretty good. It at least had whole fruit in it, unlike the jellied sauce that you plop out of the can. We ate dinner at 5 pm on Thursday, washing it all down with a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau, and had the leftovers for dinner a little bit ago in front of one of my new favorite t.v. shows, Great Garden Detectives, a show that combines horticultural enthusiasm with architecture, history, and culture. Hard to resist. Cute host too. Anway, Walt wonders which he likes better: Thanksgiving day dinner, or Thanksgiving leftovers the day after. I’m definitely in favor of the leftovers the day after, since I haven’t spent all day cooking and setting the table it feels like a completely free feast.
Now we’re tucked in front of a coal fire in the stove after spending our second sunny but cool day at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra. If we had known how wonderful the whole thing is we would’ve paid for an annual membership when we first visited – but now we’ve been twice and will go back at least another two times. It is an entire day’s worth of almost living history that interests all 3 of us; it only takes 10 minutes to get to on the train; and during the off season we have the entire place almost all to ourselves. It is a tribute to the museum’s quality that both days we have visited, Reed has been constantly attentive and interested and happy. To have spent an entire day out as a family without a moment of fussing from any of us is a special day indeed. Plus, the ticket collector ignored us both coming and going - so our train ride was free today!
There are two main parts of the museum, the transport side and the folk side, physically separated by the A2 highway that runs between Belfast and Bangor, but over which is a great little bridge with a sidewalk for pedestrians. When you get off the train a sign points you in the direction of the museum and after going up the stairs off the train platform you walk down a secret-seeming pathway and emerge just in front of the transport museum. Our first day we entered there and paid to go to both parts. We then spent the entire morning looking at the collection of old trains and reading the exhibits about railway history. Then we went over to the folk side to find the tea room in the museum’s village to have lunch.
Ballycultra village consists mostly of original historic buildings that have been carefully deconstructed, moved, and reconstructed on site. There is also a rural area with several different farms, mills, and a school. A few of the buildings are replicas of historic buildings that couldn’t be moved – sometimes because they’re still in use. In many cases the building’s original furniture is still inside. There are labourer’s cottages, a corner shop, a bank and bank manager’s house, 3 churches, a school, a rectory, a photography studio, a picture house (cinema), a post office, pub, doctor’s office and dispensary, hardware store, dressmaker’s, printshop, courthouse and police station, and various other businesses and shops that would have existed in a market village about 100 years ago. As you visit each building you get the feeling – mostly because in most of them there is a coal or peat fire burning in the fireplace or grate and all the appropriate furnishings and equipment and merchandise - that the people have just stepped out for a moment – that if you wait just a bit they’ll return, ready to fit you for a pair of shoes, repair your bike, sell you a lantern or a spade, or help you choose the fabric for your new winter coat. The highlight of our town visit today was the Charlie Chaplin film playing in the picture house - a romp on roller skates that left Reed laughing so hard he fell off the bench.
The first time we had sausage rolls (hot sausage inside puff pastry - mmm!) and cold sandwiches and tea for lunch in the tea shop in the village; today we took a picnic lunch of peanut butter and jam sandwiches that we ate in the sunshine, sitting on a stone wall next to one of the farms. We hiked around the huge rural area - like a big farm park of woods and pastures - warmed ourselves in front of the fires in all of the houses, and then went to the tea shop in the rural manor house about 2 pm for hot chocolate, scones, and coffee. It’s a bit of an extravagance on our food budget to do that (I could take a thermos of hot tea, after all) but for these field trip days out I think it’s an essential part of the experience to go sit down and rest in the warmth, with a cup of something good to drink.
Ireland is lovely in the winter; frosty and misty in the morning when the sun is coming out, and then the low sun shines through the barely leaved trees onto the greenest pastures imaginable. In the rural area there are sheep and goats grazing in the walled and hedged pastures, chickens out foraging in the grass and under the trees, and at one farm, a large friendly sow who came loudly oinking over to greet us. After we gave her some friendly conversation and a few scritches behind the ears, she continued to follow us to each corner of the pasture to say hello yet again as we made our way around her large enclosure on our way to the next farm. She was almost as big as the pig at Les Fromentaux, but not quite, and without the huge tusks. Spoke the same language though.
I’ve been trying to figure out why being there, even on my feet all day, makes me feel rested and happy, and I think perhaps it has to do with the absence of modern annoyances that are otherwise so in my face: speeding cars, people talking on cell phones, muzak, an unnecessary overabundance of material goods for sale, large amounts of plastic, flashing electric lights and neon. (Don’t get me wrong – I’m enjoying being home this evening, with the dishwasher washing the dishes and 900 channels on the wide screen t.v. and hot running water in the bathtub – but just to go back in time temporarily is very meditative and calming.)
Next time we go back we’ll go to the transport side again, because we haven’t even seen the Titanic collection yet. It was built in Belfast so there should be quite an archive of material about it. After seeing a special on t.v. about it, Reed is ready to learn more. There is also a special Santa event in December that we might go back for; rumor has it they’ll have mulled wine available at the pub, and I definitely don’t want to miss that. We were also informed that Santa would be wearing his original costume, which was at one time green and at another time brown. Apparently Santa didn’t wear red until the Coca-Cola company put him in red – which puts an entirely new slant on tradition, doesn’t it?
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