Late Night in Dundalk

What started out as a bit of a slow day picked up and ended late in the night. Today we were off to Newry to capture establishing shots of the fourth largest city in Northern Ireland and where some of the former Missoula visitors live. We went to the top of one of the hills in town and found another St. Patrick Church. What are the chances? (photo on left)John said we have used too many churches as establishers so we headed downtown Newry to show some city action. Trying to get to another street, I started down the wrong way on a one-way. I got pulled over in time, and a nice older gentleman driving the car the correct direction stopped to say "You've got a wee bit of a problem." I think that's what he said.

Looking for a better high point to get a view of the entire River Clanrye valley, we headed up to a place called Bernish Viewpoint. The signs took us up a very narrow (even more than the normal narrow) road into the hills near Newry. Then either the signs stopped or we got lost. But it all worked out well for two reasons.

First, we found a neolithic burial chamber called the Ballymacdermot Court Tomb (pictured at left). The monument is dated to between 2500-4000 B.C. and has great views of the Mourne and Cooley Mountains.

While we were lost, we came upon a road sign that said Seavers Road. I remembered that one of the Missoula Twelve lived on Seavers Road. So we took off in one direction along Seavers Road, got directions from a man mowing his lawn and headed the other way. One more stop to ask for directions and we were at the family home of Declan Cromie. Declan was the oldest of the visitors to Missoula in 1997 at age 24. We got to meet most of Declan's nine brothers because it took us three chances to finally find the correct house.

Declan is 37 years old now, married and father to six children aged 10 down to 18 months. His wife was away for her sister's birthday so our stop really took him by surprise. Declan's youngest brother Kiernan put on tea and served us cookies while we spoke to Declan. Declan's working in concrete and construction right now. His family ran a cattle ranch but he said they had sold the cattle a few years ago.

Declan and Kiernan told us the stories about being stopped by the Northern Ireland/British Army at checkpoints for hours on end. They said the checkpoints finally went away only about four years ago. The mountain top Army lookout positions also went away recently as well. They said it was difficult just to go to town just five miles away. We set up a time to shoot with Declan when he told us that his oldest son was playing in a Gaelic football game in the morning. So we'll be there tomorrow. It was great to find Declan today.

The regular football (soccer to us) was on tap at the historic Oriel Park home to the Dundalk Lillywhites of the Premier Division of the League of Ireland. We were a bit late coming from Declan's place, finding the pitch and searching for a place to park. Former sports reporter John was in his element. He headed right down to the side of the field and shot away. The picture at left was a free kick by Ross Gaynor that found the goal. But the Sligo Rovers were too much on this day and won the match 4-2. The Rovers had much louder fans who sang for pretty much the entire second half. John said we're lucky we can edit the audio because there's more than enough cursing.

From football, we returned to ancient rock formations. We drove to the nearby Ballymascanlon House Hotel and Golf Course. The course doesn't look like the kind of course you'd expect in Ireland. It's not a links course and actually looks more like Meadow Lake in

Columbia Falls. We walked behind the hotel, between the seventh and 13th fairways to a spot behind the fifth green to find the 4,000 year old Proleek Dolmen tomb (pictured at left). I do have a picture that shows the flag stick on the fifth green in the background but thought this one might be better.

After dinner in Hillsborough, we drove 45 minutes back to Dundalk to be at Jockey's Pub for an Irish music sing along. There were four musicians playing the fiddle, the drum, the button accordion and the Irish flute. The Celtic Clan (pictured at left) was nice to listen to but there was no sing along because John and I were the only ones actually there to listen to them. They were nice to talk to in between songs. Forty-five minutes back home on the motorway, copying the footage and still pictures onto my hard drives, getting the batteries on charge and writing this entry, it's now 2:30am and I'm bushed. We leave in six hours to watch 10-year-olds playing Gaelic football in Camlough (pronounced cam-lock) followed by shooting mass, we hope, in Dundalk. Should be an interesting day.