Ciara Cassidy: On The Tourist Trail at Easter

Saturday, 10 May 2014

On The Tourist Trail at Easter

The Easter School Holidays and Bank Holiday arrived, for a busy family that meant four days of day trips and touring around doing as much as possible together as we could.

Daily picnics, cycling, walking, sightseeing, two days of National Trust properties and Easter Egg Trails ensued, across Counties Antrim, Down and Londonderry.

One of the spots we recently visited was the Springhill Estate in County Londonderry which has an interesting costume museum and a good ghost story. One particular bedroom is believed to be haunted by a previous lady of the house. The story as we heard it is that the woman's husband was considered to have committed suicide in the bedroom. A later visitor to the house reported a noise from behind the bed and an apparition in the room. Many years later the bed moved was moved to a different spot and the room stripped for redecoration. A secret door was discovered. The door led to a staircase and at the bottom of the staircase a sachet of gunpowder and a pair of gloves with the initials of the lady of the house. Is our ghost mourning the death of her husband or visiting the spot of a more sinister event she was involved in? I will leave that to your sleuthing skills and imagine. It is a genteel house, not as grand as the large mansion houses but has a homely feel to it whilst imitating some features of the larger estates. You can read more about it on the National Trust website and I found this blog post about the ghost stories.

We also enjoyed a visit along the Antrim Coast, which will be appearing in the new novel I am working on (Thread of Life) and across the Glens to Coleraine.

A few pictures from our travels, including the Dark Hedges which took quite a few detours through the village of Stranocum to find, but was appreciated by the avid Game of Thrones members of the family.

We also visited Castle Ward and Tullymore Forest over the Easter break, two other sites used to film Game of Thrones. For anyone interested in the locations which have been used for the series you may like this link from Discover NI.