DAY 71-72 - Lisburn

In Lisburn we were stoked to be staying with Bert & Ruby Cooper. They knew someone who knew Jess’s Grandmother in Cromwell and Jess had meet them briefly while they were over earlier in NZ. With this small connection established they were very hospitable and most enjoyable to stay with while in Northern Ireland. We all enjoyed getting to know them better.

Bert & Ruby’s house was beautiful, Ruby’s cooking was delicious, and yarning to Bert most enjoyable. Ruby had been a nurse, and Bert was a dairy farmer. So Jess, Nicole, and myself (Kath) would yarn away about farming (while Abby pretended to be disinterested in most farming talk). Haha. But we did end up all talking about a huge variety of things and it was great to have Bert & Ruby’s knowledge of Northern Ireland to know where to go to… but before I can proceed there is one funny story Bert had about a farmer. It was something like this…
Badgers in the UK are a protected species but for many farmers this is causing a lot of trouble since the Badger can easily spread TB. One farmer was particularly feed up with TB reoccurring in his herd of cattle, and he knew there were a couple of Badgers down buy the river that were most likely to be the cause of this. So he went out and bought some cyanide pellets (ha I know in the sweet old days where you can buy that stuff for pest control!) and dropped the cyanide down the badger holes! Later he came back with a digger and dug it up. He was shocked to uncover 200 dead badgers!!!! He must have hit the Badger hotel there, so he quickly buried them again (since they are a protected species), but never the less he was delighted not to have TB troubles in his herd again!
True story! And its even more funny since knowing the troubles the UK government are going to for Badgers. For example, they’re now adding badger underpasses in their highways so badgers can cross the road safely underneath and not get squashed above… madness!
Anyhow while based in Lisburn the boarders of Northern Ireland are about a maximum 2hr drive away. Therefore we took Captain Kert (our silver VW car) for a drive up the eastern coast of Northern Ireland. We stopped at the Glanariff Natural reserve and went for a small tramp into the waterfalls there.

And further north we stopped by the Rope Bridge and Giants Causeway.

On Sunday we went to the mother-ship church, aka the Presbyterian Church in Moria. This is where Bert & Ruby usually go so we were happy to come along. The service was good and the people friendly, afterward we had a late lunch and Ruby showed us around Lisburn.
We looked though the gardens dedicated to Princess Diana near the city council building, and along the waterways. By the council building there was a statue of Frank Pantridge who invented the portable defibrillator and whom Ruby had worked with in the hospitals while she was nursing!
In all it was a fantastic three nights with Bert & Ruby ☺