SET SAILWITH ERIC ANDVAN
Poets, boats and a bloody good argument
IREMEMBER Eric Cantona, in his Manchester United days, physically attacking a fan who had said something derogatory about his poetry, or maybe about his mother. That’s my kind of footballer. Well-versed, cultured and arsey with it. The thought came to mind on a jaunt round the Lecale Peninsula in Co Down. Specifically the words of Van Morrison. Like Cantona, Van is hugely talented, and also like the Frenchman, has an aptitude for unpleasantness. I wonder have they ever met? Does Eric call the Belfast man Van l’Homme? Anyway, I was more or less using one of Van’s stanzas as a sat-nav. ‘Stopped off at Strangford Lough/Early in the morning/Drove through Shrigley taking pictures/ And on to Killyleagh/ Stopped off for Sunday papers at the Lecale district, just before Coney Island.’ An hour earlier I had stood at the graveside of Louis McNiece in Carrowdore, another great Northern versifier. He had a good handle on the weather hereabouts. In Bagpipe Music he wrote: ‘The glass is falling hour by hour/ The glass will fall forever/But if you break the bloody glass/You won’t hold up the weather.’ I eventually made it to Killyleagh in time for the Saturday afternoon seisún at The Dufferin Arms on the High Street. Going at full throttle, I was delighted by a handful of instruments you don’t normally see at a pub session — a double bass. with an amazing thwacky sound in the crowded room, as well as harp and Scottish small pipes. Plus the more usual array of instruments — banjo, fiddle, bodhrán and accordion.
But as I had to catch the boat across from Strangford to the aptly-named Portaferry where I was staying, I began musing on ferries...
OLDEST FERRY
FUNNILY enough, on the website Legends of Lecale, the Strangford to Portaferry service service is called ‘probably the oldest in Europe, if not the world’.
It was set up in 1180 and further authorised in 1604 by James I. The family granted the franchise were given a charter reading: ‘His heirs and assigns, at his and their expense for ever to maintain, keep and have in readiness, in and upon the ferry of Strangford, a good strong and sufficient ferry boat...’ with plenty more ‘wherefores’ and ‘ye trustie ferriemen’ type of thing.
The ferry crossing was plied by many types of vessel over the centuries, with the first car ferries introduced in 1946.
However, I must introduce a sour note here. It seems that the claim of being the oldest, most venerable ferry still in use is disputed.
The Mersey Ferry from Liverpool to Birkenhead began in 1150. It was all down to the monks of the Benedictine Priory. They would charge a small fare to row passengers across the estuary. In 1330, Edward III granted a charter to the Priory and its successors for ever: ‘The right of ferry there... for men, horses and goods, with leave to charge reasonable tolls.’
However, there may have been a short break following the Dissolution of the monasteries after 1536. So maybe the Portaferry ferry is still in with a shout.
GREENEST FERRY
The greenest ferry I’ve ever been on is in Basel, Switzerland. The cable ferry, just by Mittlere Rheinbrucke (middle Rhine bridge) is technically speaking a ‘reaction ferry’. It requires no artificial energy, no motorised assistance — it is driven across the Rhine entirely by the current — in either direction.
The reaction of the current against a fixed tether propels the vessel across the river. Obviously such ferries operate faster and more effectively in rivers with strong currents, and the Rhine has just that. So the boat heads across the river by tacking against the current, and is held in position by a rope suspended above the river, thus letting the current push the boat across from landing to landing. Simples.
To book passage, faehri.ch is the website, or you could go analogue and just press the bell and the ferry will head, crab-like, across the river for you.
MOST EXPENSIVE FERRY
THE ferry at the Henley Regatta — the blazers and bubbly extravaganza on the Thames — probably wins hands down. I was charged £5 to cross the river, a voyage of some 18m or thereabouts. That works out at over €300 per kilometre.
Never mind the most private jet in the world, getting to the International Space Station probably compares quite well with that.