37. Derry Day 3


After dining with Dot last night, she urged us to find some time this morning to go into the city of Derry and walk some of the Wall. Derry is a walled city. En route we took a wrong turn and all of a sudden our satnav went crazy - would you believe that we had crossed back into the Republic of Ireland! Like! We didn’t even know the border was so close to Derry, coz we had entered Northern Ireland (NI) from a different direction last time. But the satnav went back into kms, etc until we did the u-turn and crossed back into NI. However, this time there was a Welcome to Northern Ireland sign with the word Northern scribbled out - so the sign said Welcome to Ireland.

From this mishap, we made our way to the city not really knowing where we were going but Providence was on our side and we drove straight into a park, right next to a set of stairs leading to the walkway of the wall.

So up we went. It was fascinating and as we looked at the various things to see we discovered that the church right next to the wall was the church that St Columba left from, to journey to the island of Iona (Scotland), where he started writing the manuscript which became known as The Book of Kells.The church is St Augustine’s and history records that St Columba, but he wasn’t a Saint then, left this church in 563AD for Iona.

Other points of interest to be seen from the wall, included the Presbyterian Church, The Platform, The Apprentice Boys Memorial Hall, The Siege Museum, the starting point of The Grand Parade, St Augustine’s Church (as previously mentioned), The Royal Bastion, Stable Lane, Double Bastion, Bishops Gate and Church Bastion.

The photo is St Augustine’s Church, as mentioned above in relation to St Columba.

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