The pace was rapid as the DUP descended on Rathcoole, Europe's second largest housing estate, known as much for its social problems as for its fervent loyalist sympathies. With Cave Hill forming a picturesque backdrop to the high-rise flats and grey terraced houses, the DUP candidate, Mr Nigel Dodds, knew he was in safe territory.
"He is an honest, hard-working man and the only one to keep us red, white and blue," said Ms Joan Baillie after vigorously shaking Mr Dodds's hand across her front gate. "The British government are selling us down into the Free State and he knows that that's where we don't want to go!"
A man in a red polo shirt confided that he would have voted for one of the loyalist fringe parties in the past but was impressed with the DUP candidate's efforts to get speed ramps in place on the estate.
"You can't overestimate the importance of turning up on people's doorsteps and talking to them face to face," said Mr Dodds while resisting attempts by two middle-aged women to drag him into their livingroom.
"Indeed, thanks so much for coming. You are the first who has shown his face round here," said one of them, Ms Florence Lemon. "Hasn't he lost an awful lot of weight. Sure, it must be all this running around!"
On the nationalist side, the SDLP candidate, Mr Alban Maginness, with support from the Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, were in the leafy residential area of Knutsford. "Who's the baldy fellow?" a boy asked while Mr Maginness and Mr Quinn engaged with his father. "He's an important politician from Dublin," said an SDLP canvasser. "I thought he had a weird accent," said the boy, trotting off with his mates.
"I can't stress enough how important this election is. In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that it is another referendum on the Agreement," Mr Maginness told a man in his 30s working on his car. "Sure, no worries," the man replied, putting down a screwdriver.
"To be honest," he said as the canvassers left, "I didn't want to embarrass your man but I am going to vote Sinn Fein."
Outside St Patrick's Church, the Sinn Fein candidate, Mr Gerry Kelly, found himself swamped by Pro-Life activists who had given a talk at Mass. "Where do you stand on abortion and do you not find it a bit inappropriate hovering outside a church on a Sunday?" asked a lady in a cream suit.
"If there is a danger to the mother's life or of serious psychological damage, or if it's a case of rape or incest I would be pro-choice," he replied.
The atmosphere changed dramatically as they entered the nearby Carrick Hill estate, one of the constituency's most deprived areas. Mr Kelly was soon surrounded by small girls screaming: "Go Gerry, go!" "Did we hire them?" asked Mr Kelly. "They must be watching the Jerry Springer show!"
He got cornered by Sister Mary of the Little Sisters of the Assumption, who pleaded with him to "keep working for peace". "It's fantastic what you have achieved so far," she told him. "John Hume has given a great lead and then Gerry Adams picked it up marvellously." "Actually, we have it the other way round," Mr Kelly smiled. "But true, it took great courage what John Hume did."
The UUP candidate and sitting MP, Mr Cecil Walker, 76, pressed the flesh off the Oldpark Road. Right on a sectarian interface, two old ladies were worried about their "bad neighbours". "Do you remember the old days when people were better?" one of them, Kathleen, asked Mr Walker. "Indeed they were," he replied.
Mr Walker appeared embarrassed as his aide recited the candidate's achievements on behalf of local pensioners. "If I look at what they are doing for pensioners down South I get almost envious. Saying that doesn't make me a united Irelander, it just makes me too honest for my own good."
As Mr Walker moved on, one old lady told her friend that a "lovely young man", a certain Nigel Dodds, had come to the local Baptist church and taken all the pensioners on a day out to Stormont. "It was a lovely day, so it was. But I couldn't tell Cecil that, could I?"