Crossing the Border
Vast expanses of waterways connect and combine in natural and manmade form where County Down meets County Louth. Great feats of mid 19th century engineering once provided transport routes for cargo ships: the parallel Newry Canal and Newry River link Lough Neagh in the north to Carlingford Lough in the south. These days, they are photogenic tourism spots.
Much Ado About Somewhere
“This is like the set of a James Bond movie!” ponders campaigning model and model campaigner Janice Porter, gazing out towards a beach of sullen ashes overlooked by a landlocked 1830s molten lighthouse and a working coastguards’ row; and set inland, a solitary street of stone mill houses complete with endearing cat colony, and those three conjoined twins of golf club sized semi detached villas (actually built by the London and Northwest Railway Company as holiday accommodation for Greenore Golf Course as part of the railway company’s development of the village) whilst all around swirling pearly white clouds scrape the ground blurring built and natural form. A once aristocratic boat Lady Dundalk, now faded, gently bobs beyond the shore. Greenore is a place of quiet phantoms. A dimly recalled dream sequence. A drenched entrenched landscape. A forlorn foreboding series of plots. It’s also where you can catch the ferry across Carlingford Lough to Greencastle over in County Down. Anyway, we’re off next to the James Bond movie première in London. As William Shakespeare’s character Don Pedro says, “Good morrow to this fair assembly.”
