Despite an early wake up call by other residents at 2am (and a call to reception staff to tell them about it), we woke up feeling refreshed and ready for the journey north. We had breakfast in the Wolff Grill room, which, when it belonged to Harland and Wolff, was a drawing office. We were seated next to the chief draughtsman’s office, which used to be on the second floor of the building. It is a wooden structure about the same size as a garden shed, with windows all round. The manager would use the windowed office to keep an eye on his staff, and was referred to as The Bollocking Box, because that was where they would be reprimanded.

Before leaving Belfast, we walked along the slipway of the Titanic which was quite moving.

The area is covered by a map of the construction of the Titanic, including the lifeboat positions.

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The bow of the Titanic is marked out in the exact position where it was built .

Parts of the slipway of the Olympic are now mapped out showing how many people actually died on the Titanic. You will see that there’s more grass, marking the proportion of each travel class who died, compared to who survived (annotated by decking). The glass panels list the names of those who lost their lives on that fateful day. Many of them were crew and third class passengers. There is also a dedication to the eight men who died whilst working on the construction of the vessel.

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After we left Belfast, we headed straight to Carrickfergus. At this point the weather was looking good, so we had the opportunity to look round without worrying about rain.

We walked around the Marina and then headed towards the castle.

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After leaving Carrickfergus, we headed for Bushmills, which was where our next hotel was booked. The weather turned and there was localised flooding on the roads.

We also drove through many pro-British areas.

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By 3pm, we had arrived at the Bushmills Inn, our next hotel stop. We checked in and then headed to the Giant’s Causeway. It is one of the places on my bucket list and I was so happy that the weather was on our side and we did a great walk along the causeway. I could not believe the beauty of this UNESCO world heritage site. There are 40 000 columns of basalt columns that interlock with each other. We managed to walk to the end of this natural wonder which forms like stepping stones into the sea.

Just as a bit of a tip, take the red trail to the causeway if you are ok on your feet. The path is flat most of the way and you get to see the Causeway from above. The hardest part is going down the Shepherd’s steps, so research before you go. Also, there is no need to take the expensive visitor experience which costs so much more compared to the £5 car parking charge that we paid.

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Last but not least, we ended our day at the Bushmills Inn, our hotel, having prebooked a table for the evening. The food, drinks and service were exquisite.

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