Susan McKay offers a reality check for visitors to the North, Lonely Planet's new must-see destination
Must-see? Abuzz with life? Full of warm, genuine people in good spirits? Is this the Norn Iron I know and love and hate? Perhaps the authors of the new Lonely Planet Bluelist 2007, who have nominated the North as one of the "must-see" destinations for next year, wish to send their readers to events such as the proposed burning of Lundy in Garvagh tonight. Twenty loyalist bands plan to march an effigy of Lundy through the small Co Derry town, before setting him alight in a public car park. (He was the governor of Derry who urged compromise to end the siege of the city in 1689.)
The tourist is unlikely to meet any local Catholics. They'll be in their homes, hoping they won't be attacked again. Lonely Planet-eers may find the music a bit on the rough side. That's "kick the Pope" style. They should look out for the band formed in honour of loyalist paramilitaries who blew themselves up while priming a bomb for a Catholic restaurant in 1974.
They should not wear green. A friend who walked through the Co Antrim town of Bushmills in green corduroys overheard a youth in a huddled gang remark to his mates, "Look at your man in his fenian trousers". The whiskey is good, though, and the distillery worth a visit.
There used to be a sign in the window of a Garvagh chip shop that said: "If your wife can't cook, don't shoot her, come to us for a fish supper." Boiling in oil is still a common practice in Ulster eateries. The notion of service isn't always fully understood, either. I once saw fine prawns in a sandwich shop in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, but when I asked for them in my roll, the young woman serving me winced and said as she plunged her hand into the bowl: "Houl on while ah get sick."
Go to the seaside. Although, friends from the Republic who visited Portavogie on the Ards peninsula recently were alarmed by the bloody red hand painted across the road, the graffiti and a certain atmosphere. They decided to talk German while they were there.
The coast in winter can be very Lonely Planet-ish, especially in the far North where the blight of holiday homes has been allowed to afflict towns such as Portballintrae, Co Antrim, and Castlerock, Co Derry. Shops and hotels and bars have gone and the wind howls through the empty apartment blocks. Beautiful coastal views abound, however. Sunsets over the Donegal mountains on Inishowen; silvery glimpses of the Scottish islands.
The Antrim coast road deserves all the praise it gets, and the Glens are wonderful, with their Victorian walkways and metal bridges. The mountains of Mourne are lovely, and yes, they sweep down to the sea, at Newcastle, which is a handsome town, though it has a lingering end-of-season feel to it, and the season ended 40 years or so ago.
A historian once wrote, "whenever the name Portadown came before my eyes, it was nearly always bad news". True. Drumcree has left a bad aura, but at least it is over. There's a great art gallery called the Millennium Court and good roads on which to leave. Ballymena has lots of bigots and shops. Don't look for "the craic" here. They'll think you mean cocaine.
Along the Border, south Armagh still has citizens whose reaction to strangers passing through is to stare penetratingly. This can be unnerving.
Derry's walls are great, but walking anywhere near them late at night is foolish because of drunken violence. Enniskillen can be a bit prim, but Fermanagh is friendly and has the Aughakillymaude mummers and the lakes.
Unlike in the Republic, where they were burnt down or ruined by the Government, the North has great Big Houses, maintained by the snobbish but efficient National Trust. The gardens at Mount Stewart in Co Down are amazing.
Lonely Planet co-founder Maureen Wheeler admires the willingness of her native Northern Ireland to "turn any event into a party". Yes, as in Hamlet, "we'll teach you to drink deep, ere you depart". I've never heard of the cocktail the guide recommends, but anyone who asks for a "Belfast car bomb" in a pub deserves whatever they get.