Friedhelm Rathjen
Veerser Weg 16
D-27383 Scheeßel
Germany
E-Mail:rejoyce@ gmx.de

Singing Wheels: Cycling the Border

by Friedhelm Rathjen

On Boa Island in Lower Lough Erne, only a stone's throw from the Donegal border, a mysterious little statue from pre-Christian times can be spotted on an old cemetery. So far, nobody has yet found out who made this artefact, or for what reason. All the more tempting it is to take this statue as a symbol of the present state of Ireland: it is a janus-faced statue. Both sides are inseparately united, but the two faces stare in quite opposite directions. Could this be the fate of Ireland? On a cycling tour I wanted to find out what, if anything, the border which separates the Irish Republic from Northern Ireland really means today.

   Starting point for my trip was Dundalk in the Republic, and my final destination had to be Derry, the northern city which is still called Londonderry by many, although the name has been officially changed back to the shorter version some years ago. The route in between was not really my own decision but rather dictated by political geography: I wanted to cross the border at each of the twenty official check-points identified on my slightly out-of-date touring map, and at a number of inofficial crossing points in between; I wanted to always stay as close to the border as possible, and I wanted to spend more or less equal time on both sides of the border. Including just a few detours caused by insufficient signposting, this all summed up to about 500 kilometres (a bit more than 300 miles), which I managed to cycle in four days. You think this is quite fast? May-be it is, but luckily there was a strong wind blowing from southerly directions. Mind you, I'm speaking of real winds, not of any metaphorical wind of change: hereabouts during the last few centuries people have done so much harm by using metaphorical language that we should really prefer precise and practical speech. The new overriding motto is: pragmatism.

   Yes, pragmatism - but how, in sheer practice, do you find out where to use Irish punts and where payment should be in sterling? During my trip, more than once I found myself wondering on which side of the border I was. How do you distinguish both parts of Ireland from each other? On both sides of the border, a daily mix of sun, wind and sometimes rain makes ditches and fields radiate with bright colours of green; on both sides the small country lanes that every cyclist loves meander through hills and countrysides of a charming gentleness; and on both sides of the border, the lone cyclist finds the people young and old to be extremely cordial and friendly. So, should we care at all on which territory we are?

   I had to care, of course, because this was the point of my trip, after all. So I was always eager to find out where exactly I crossed the border - not always an easy feat. I knew even before I started my journey that there were no border controls any more, but I had prepared myself to take photographs of check-points and smiling border policemen, may-be even of IRA slogans on the walls. Reality, however, looked much better than I had dared to dream of. The border had simply disappeared. When on the shores of Carlingford Lough, somewhere between Omeath and Newry, I crossed from the Republic into Northern Ireland, this was the first but by no means the last instance where my crossing the border went completely unnoticed. Not before I noticed that the signposts looked different did I realize that I actually was on new territory.

   During the next few days, this happened again and again. Okay, if I spotted red telephone boxes I knew I was in the north, and if all signposts gave distances in kilometres I knew I was back in the south. Sometimes the tarmac somehow changed when I was crossing the border (and contrary to public belief, the better tarmac is not always found in the north), but a number of new roads have even been tarred with complete disregard to state boundaries. The best border indications nowadays are the petrol stations which profit from the price gap between north and south. A few years ago, when both currencies where nearly equal, petrol was cheaper north of the border, but meanwhile things have changed a lot: only a millionaire or a philanthropist would patronize a northern filling station, given the fact that just a few steps down the road petrol is much cheaper. Some clever station owners even run a filling station each on both sides of the border so that they can respond to any fluctuation of currencies at short notice. On the main road from Monaghan (Irish Republic) into Armagh (Northern Ireland) I spotted a Border Filling Station located virtually on the bridge spanning River Blackwater which forms the border here.

   "Fermanagh welcomes you, . . . naturally": I saw a lot of singposts like this one, but never did they welcome me into a new state, always into a new county only, and it was my task to know or find out which county belonged to which territory. Oddest of all were the only official greetings that welcomed me everytime I cycled into county Donegal: the fact that I entered new territory was not even mentioned, but in three languages I was told to drive on the left side of the road! Surely no car driver will be able to make his or her way through Northern Ireland without driving on the left already. Yes, and near Belturbet in Cavan, where the bridge into county Fermanagh had been blown up decades ago, I could not only profit from a brand new bridge but also take a rest in the close vicinity of a nice bronze monument declaring "Peace for all". This monument depicts a couple exchanging kisses (and may-be more) in a way that should be a model for things to come.

   In Belturbet, people are eagerly waiting for the tourists that could help to set a region on its feet that suffers from major economical problems. "Please mention in your report that everybody is welcome here," a woman in a shop tells me, "and that there's nothing here that has anything to do with troubles." The Fermanagh / Cavan border area, however, although still waiting for more people to come, has always at least had the advantage that this is the Irish lakelands region where even during the worst years of the troubles anglers and skippers went. The number of tourists has slightly increased since just a few years ago the Shannon-Erne waterway (connecting both rivers and providing a gigantic water system exclusively for recreational activities) has been reopened.

   During the troubles, things were much worse in more northerly border towns. In the summer of 1986, when Irish writer Colm Tóibín undertook a walk along the whole Irish border, he found Garrison to be a real "ghost town". Nothing could be farther from reality today: the ugly duckling has grown into a swan, gaining a lot from its fine situation on the shores of huge Lough Melvin and offering visitors a rich variety of accomodation, plus a holiday centre where you can do everything conceivable from water-skiing to mountain-biking. And even in Pettigo, a small town separated into two parts by the border, there is much change for the better. In the early 1990s, Pettigo looked rather shabby and suffered from a high amount of unemployment, but today it has grown quite pretty. Everywhere on the outskirts, there are new bungalows (quite a number of these offering bed & breakfast), and a community employment scheme is trying its best to qualify unemployed on such fields as craftwork, fine food production or tourist guidance. An elderly gentleman on the road whom I confront with old photographs shows quite a lot of enthusiasm: "Oh yes, there's been a lot of change! No problems with the border any more - because it doesn't really exist any longer. Only the weather could be better now!" Well, but the weather could also be a lot worse. . .

   "There's no border any more": this is the sentence I hear everywhere, on both sides, and it's always a sentence that sounds full of hope. Most people, however, very well realize that things need time to improve. "There's no border any more", my host in Castleblaney tells me, too. "The only border there is is the border between those who have money and those who haven't. There's a lot of money made out of the border" - not by this brave man, apparently.

   Castleblaney is situated near the Armagh border, and perhaps this is a problem: for decades, south Armagh had been known as a "bandit country" where British troops were never safe. Until this very day, the people here seem to sympathize with the IRA: I spot some such slogans as "free all POWs" or "disarm the RUC". Even here, however, there are numerous indications of a peaceful change. Slogans of hatred or revenge are virtually non-existent, even in highly-republican areas, and everywhere people are building new houses and new roads. This clearly shows that people here feel at home - normality has returned. "Of course you can't simply forget what happened," people keep telling me, "but we do sincerely hope that our children will grow up into a peaceful world where the old stories don't matter." There's scarcely anyone who does not express hope for the children.

   And who could be without hope amid the unbelievably beautiful landscape through which I am cycling, shielded by a clear blue sky? "I used to cycle a lot when I was younger," a filling-station-cum-post-office-attendant had told me earlier in the day, "and on a fine morning like this one I thought the wheels would sing to me." I nearly start to sing myself, given the fact that the green scenery all around looks like sheer idyll and most people even exceed their usual friendliness as soon as they spot me, the lone cyclist from abroad. Sure, a few heads are shaken, for cycling is not fashionable in Ireland as it used to be in the older days, and even in larger towns it's not always easy to find a cycle shop - but along the border things appear to be a bit better. In Ulster, there's a whole network of excellent long-distance cycling routes, all very well signposted, and always using quiet country lanes. The longest of these, the Kingfisher Trail (370 KM), brilliantly ignores all borders and connects Fermanagh with the southern counties Monaghan, Cavan, Leitrim and Donegal.

   In the southern parts of county Tyrone, between Aughnacloy and Fivemiletown, I criss-cross another singposted cycling route, named after novelist William Carleton. Yes, of course I always keep the phalanx of Irish writers in my head while cycling, for literature has always been part of my Irish experience, and the rhythm of my pedalling ideally harmonizes with the metrical foot of well-remembered poetry. Verse written by catholic poets Patrick Kavanagh ("The bicycles go by in twos and threes") and Seamus Heaney ("And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked") keep me in steady pace while I pass fluttering Union Jacks. Oh yes, this is protestant terrain, but of course it makes no difference any more, all the more so for me as a tourist. There's nothing to scare me away from using the old smugglers' road from Fivemiletown over steep Carn Rock to Clones - and although I have to admit that I was dripping with sweat while climbing up the road, the reason has certainly nothing to do with the fact that Colm Tóibín, when walking along the border in the mid-eighties, was warned about taking this route because he would be likely to run into paramilitary patrols. Gone are the days, and luckily so!

   A few kilometres outside Clones, just on the border, I'm looking for the homestead of farmer and writer Eugene McCabe, with whom I have made an appointment. McCabe's novels and stories are set in these borderlands and describe the beauties of the landscape, but also the excesses of violence. What I'm particularly interested in (under the impression of my cycling tour) is the essay Borderlands, in which Eugene McCabe gives us his personal view: "The haggard field behind our house looks down on Lackey Bridge, a focus for over a decade. American senators have come to take a look, along with taoisigh, tánaistí, prayer groups, Sinn Féin jazz festivals, a persistent road-opening committee and TV crews from all over Europe." After having read these lines, I had imagined to find a huge bridge, spanning a mighty river, but what I really find is only a streamlet with a tiny new construction leading across. Why all this fuss about such a far-from-spectacular bridge? "Well, this has always been just another symbolic affair", Eugene tells me. And symbolism, this becomes clearer and clearer to me while cycling along the border, is something that we should finally get rid of, at least in these parts of Ireland. So I ceremoniously revoke all my attempts to find the Irish border situation depticted in the janus-headed statue on Boa Island. In fact, the people on both sides of the border do not look into opposite directions any more - they all look to where the hope is, they all look ahead.

   In his Borderlands essay, Eugene McCabe also tells us the true story of a bearded Ukrainian blacksmith, who came to Fermanagh a few years ago, wearing American army surplus combat jacket, duds and cap. When he was told it was unwise to wear such a uniform in this area, the man roared laughing: "I have nothing else to wear . . . they will have to shoot me." And for six weeks, the Ukrainian crossed the border each day, on foot or bike, and never saw another uniform. "He often said that he found this Border area the loveliest and most peaceful place he had been since leaving Kiev. . . And the point of this story? If a young stranger can fall in love with our Border country and its people in bad, sad times, how many thousands might come here in the future if the bombs were put away for good and agreement reached?" Meanwhile, this future has come - and the borderlands' rural idyll with its special old-world charm can be witnessed, travelled and enjoyed by lovers of quietude without running any kind of risk, apart from the risk to fall in love with this country, too.

   From Eugene McCabe's farm, country lanes run into four different directions - and so criss-crossy is the borderline hereabouts, that it's virtually impossible to reach another human dwelling on any of these roads without crossing the border at least once. Meanwhile, however, this has lost all significance for me, and I don't mind any more on which territory I am. The border between both parts of Ireland is not even an open border any more - it's a non-existent border. This, by the way, also means that there are no inofficial border crossings any more: everyone may go where he or she wants to. At the end of my 500 kilometres, I have crossed the border 35 times, never having been more than 8 KM away from the borderline. But I have not met a single border policeman, soldier or customs officer, let alone paramilitaries. And the wheels of my bike simply don't stop to sing to me.

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Friedhelm Rathjen is a German writer, translator, literary critic and private scholar. He has edited a volume of essays, In Principle, Beckett is Joyce, and the most recent one of his eight books in German is a collection of travel writings, Irische Reise.