Shall we Sing a Song for you?

We got up bright and early on the Thursday and gave out magazines again for an hour and a half and were just about to start heading ‘North to the South’ when Strobert remembered that although we had been at the Bridge Club (where Covenant Fellowship hold their worship services) the night before, we hadn’t actually got our photo taken at it, so we nipped back and did that, before beginning to drive blindly and hope to hit Creevagh at some stage.

Leaflet dist Pilgrim style

Pilgrim Fathers – building bridges

Seen at a set of temporary traffic lights – Southern drivers must need extra help

Sadly we were nowhere near Armagh (and the school term had now started!) so we couldn’t call into the Royal School, however we did manage to find a place we sang about at Senior Camp in July but didn’t even know existed till we found it on our route!

As the day had progressed, the Pilgrim Fathers were becoming more and more like Monaghan and the proverbial pregnant cow (near Cavan) and that’s where we had lunch. At long last however, we reached the place where everyone’s called Moffett:

Then on to Fairview followed by Tullyvallen and Ballylane – at rush hour!!

Definitely the coolest gates in the world

Played a bit of football at Tullyvallen a la Synod

The car at the top of the Ballylane

Then came the one church that we struggled to find – Clare. According to Pilgrim Navigator Joel, the maps are wrong.

At Clare we met another local wondering what we were doing – which was great as he was able to give us perfect directions to Ballenon, without which we’d still be looking for it.

Faughan man Harry Tadley was a big influence on both our dads

We hit rush hour again between Ballenon and Newry

Then on to Newry – the ultimate church with a tower – and Raithfriland and Loughbrickland:

Then, as darkness fell, we hit Dromore manse, got chips in Dromore for tea and finished off the day at Dromara:

And finally off to the Yeates’ for the last night of the Pilgrimage.

On Monday morning I start into final year at the unearthly hour of 11am. One of the ‘perks’ of being in final year is having to write a dissertation (8,000 words I think). Technically you can do your dissertation on anything you want, but pretty much everybody I think does it on one of the modules they study. One of the modules I’ve chosen this year is ‘Presbyterians in Ulster, 1690-1840′ so hopefully I can do my dissertation on it (although most people chose to do their dissertation on a module they’re doing in the first semester, and this is a second semester one). However as long as the dude running the module (the head of the history department no less) agrees then I can do it. Which brings me to why I’m posting this here – I would be grateful if people could suggest a few titles / areas of interest for it. (I don’t know quite how specific they have to be – but it can’t have been done before). An obvious one (from an ‘RP till I die’ perspective) would probably be to look at the introduction and rise of man-made hymns during this time. But it doesn’t have to be RP related. So please suggest a few, either in the comments or email me (steve at this address) as I’ll need to have a few ideas when I email this boy (but I don’t need to do this for a good while yet so you have a bit of time to think about it). Thanks :-)

Pilgrimage reportage will resume shortly…

We had originally intended to do all the West apart from Galway on the first day, but being pioneers we didn’t know how long it would take, so on Wednesday morning we had to do Letterkenny, Convoy & Stranorlar before we could get near the N17. We also fitted in the original Letterkenny RPC building at Gortlee which Mark had told us about the night before. At Stranorlar we had to deal with a deaf local with 3 dogs, but at least he was trying to protect his local church!

Then we could finally start heading for Galway. It took us about 3 and a half hours from Stranorlar, including stopping in Sligo for lunch. My memories of the famous N17 are not ‘stone walls and the grass is green’ but long lines of slow traffic! However it gave us time for more video-diarying. We arrived at Billy and Mary’s and were soon out giving out some of the 4YOU magazines left over from the GO team.

Then we went back and had tea. We were going to play football with Michael and Patrick but it was called off due to the rain so we watched Man Utd v. Celtic instead. Joel just before Celtic scored this free kick: “No-one ever scores free kicks, they’re the most overhyped part of football”. Shunsuke Nakamura 1 Joel 0.

The boys escaped being schooled

Then we went to the bookshop and changed the battery on the burglar alarm and had a walkabout Galway – seems a lovely city.

Then we went back, chatted to Billy and went to bed.

They’re all now online on Flickr. I’ve used tags to make it easier to find photos of each church. Just type in ‘www.flickr.com/photos/stute/tags/’ and then add on the name of the congregation, for example http://www.flickr.com/photos/stute/tags/kellswater should bring up all the photos of Kellswater. If the name contains two words, just type it all in as one word – ig http://www.flickr.com/photos/stute/tags/shaftesburysquare. Then, when the thumbnails come up, chose the photo you want and click ‘All Sizes’ at the top left to view it bigger / fullsize.

Note that photos of Limavady, Faughan, Bready, Dromore and Dromara were taken in the dark so they probably won’t do those looking artistic photos. But if anybody really wanted them, I suppose I could do them again (except Dromara – and there’s a pic of Dromore here)

Of course, the Pilgrim Fathers would not demand acknowledment in any history books being produced or anything, but it would be nice ;-)