A Visit to Portrush

When I was a child we went on holiday and days out to Portrush, or The Port as we called it, on the north coast of Northern Ireland.  I returned there couple of weeks ago with my sisters and our families to find that some things had changed but much had remained the same.  I was pleased to see that this building the Arcadia, which seemed very glamorous when I was little, has been restored and is now an art gallery, cafe and wedding venue.  I remember going to a 'disco' there in the 70s (What ever happened to discos?) and apparently The Stranglers played here in 1978 supported by The Undertones.  Would like to say that I was there but really I had no idea about this until I googled it a couple of minutes ago.

Don't be fooled by the blue skies - it was fairly chilly the day we visited, as it nearly always was.  But just as we had often braved the freezing Atlantic water, our children - well the smaller ones anyway - were right in there paddling and getting wet as soon as we got onto the beach.  It was really busy too, everyone determined to enjoy themselves and defy the weather. 

After a while on the beach we headed for Barry's Amusement Park, where we spent much of our days on damp Sunday School excursions. I loved it then: my favourite rides were the cyclone and the Ghost Train and I loved playing the arcade games where you could race little horses or win money by making the coins tip over the edge.   I was brave enough to try the Big Dipper roller coaster a few times as a teenager, but was never that keen.  Now there are more rides outside, but my favourites are still there and the Ghost Train doesn't seem to have changed at all in nearly 50 years.  The actor, James Nesbitt, worked there once and seemed to share my memories as you can see on this You Tube clip.  Sadly the man featured in the clip, Colm Quinn, who worked on the Hobby Horses all his life until he was 79, died earlier this year.

I brought my daughter here when she was little and she rode on the hobby horses just like I did.  This time, though, I found it a bit too noisy in Barry's so I left her to take her little cousins on the ghost train and went for a more peaceful walk around Ramore Head with husband and dog.