Tour de Fred: Following Fred Sirieix's trail through Northern Ireland and Donegal
Follow Fred Sirieix's tracks around the north of Ireland – taking in wild seascapes, walks with alpacas and a pint of Guinness.
I look at my companion’s skin and contemplate, accidentally aloud, how warm it would keep me. “We’ll soon be selling beanie hats made out of it,” nods John, our guide. In my defence, I should perhaps point out that it is very windy indeed here on Ireland’s Atlantic coast – and that the companion whose hide I’m eyeing up is an alpaca, like a llama but with softer, more wool-like fleece.
John keeps 50 of the sweet-natured beasts on a ruggedly beautiful patch of emerald upland called the Knockamany Bens, leading guests on hour-long walks with them (wildalpacaway.com). On mine, I rubber-neck furiously, torn between the photogenic furballs themselves and the breath-robbing views – the honey-coloured beach of Five Fingers Strand one-way, dramatic cliffs the other. We’re on the Inishowen Peninsula, the northernmost sliver of Donegal, where a quirk of cartography means Northern Ireland shares an east-west border with the South.
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I’m following in the footsteps and tyre-tracks of Fred Sirieix, whose Tour de Fred: Northern Ireland reaches its finale here (and can be viewed on ITVX). The five-part series sees the broadcaster and former maître d’ cycle round from Dublin to Londonderry before crossing back into the Irish Republic for a taste of Inishowen.
It’s a trip that’s really easy to replicate, even if you’ve no intention of straddling a saddle. Sirieix arrives in Dublin by ferry (irishferries.com), which has a certain romance, but there are cheap flights in and out of Dublin, Derry and Belfast. Hiring a car will open up some of the most dangerously scenic drives in Europe, but for safety’s sake bring a co-driver to share with, because it’s impossible to keep your eyes on the gorgeous road around, say, the Causeway Coast or rolling uppy-downy country roads of Antrim.
Accommodation takes in everything from wee ma-&-da B&Bs to grand country-house estates; mealtimes will leave you satisfyingly stuffed whether it’s local livestock (I’ve never eaten better steak than at Belfast’s MeatLocker; michaeldeane.co.uk/meatlocker) or seafood. Grab fish and chips from either of the excellent chippies in Bushmills and eat them among the seaside ruins of Dunluce Castle.
The produce in these parts is so good, in fact, that even a kitchen clown like me can’t mess it up. At Wild & Fired BBQ School (lo-slo.co.uk), I’m taught to “cook dirty” by laying my meat directly on the coals – and though I don’t pull it off with quite the Gallic élan Sirieix manages, the results are a revelation.
Wild & Fired sits prettily beside Lough Foyle among the elegantly rambling gardens of Brook Hall (brookhall.co.uk), and Sirieix visits each in the final episode. Like him, I get both a botany and a history lesson on the guided tour, but the various walking tours available in Derry itself are a reminder that here, historic events aren’t confined to previous centuries.
The murals, the walls, the flags, the bullet holes, the Peace Bridge – even the tongue-in-cheek ten-feet-high tribute to Channel 4’s Derry Girls painted on a gable-end in the city centre – they’re all powerfully visible evidence of just how recently the Troubles racked this city, and how far it’s come since.
Beyond the bustle (and great live music scenes) of Derry and Belfast, though, the peace and quiet is palpable. Sirieix cycles the Mourne Mountains and Strangford Lough, out on the eastern edge of Northern Ireland, but you don’t need his steely thighs to enjoy them.
The Mournes are walkable by even the normally footpath-phobic – true, their heights are dramatically imposing, but their lower slopes are gorse-jewelled, sheep-speckled, gently inclining curves, criss-crossed by easy tracks (walkthemournes.com). Up the road at Strangford, meanwhile, I find tranquillity where I least expect it: stand-up paddleboards turn out to be easier than they look (Strangfordloughactivitycentre.com), and I’m soon alone on the still, clear waters with only seals for company, the big-eyed beauties lounging on some Lough-edge rocks.
Eventually, however, I succumb to the bike – albeit a cheat’s version. Borrowing an eBike (grassroutes.ie) and the vast brain of my guide Peter (discoverireland.ie/donegal/the-great-inishowen-derry-tour-experience), I spend my last day rolling through a landscape from a location manager’s fantasies. Tumbledown family farms, tinkling streams, contented-looking cattle, ancient Celtic crosses, stern Catholic churches, high wild peat bogs – and, most memorable of all, the call-me-home smoke-smell of peat turves burned for fuel in those farmhouses’ fireplaces.
There’s only one way for this day, and this trip, to end. Earlier, I’d seen the future of booze at the chic, boutique, celebrity-endorsed Muff Liquor Company (the distillery takes its name from its home village of Muff; themuffliquorcompany.com).
But at McGowan’s Bar, in the tiny Culineen village of Redcastle, it’s like I’ve stepped into the 19th century, and I’m warmly enveloped in the locals’ chat the minute I walk in the door. My pint of Guinness comes with a whiskey chaser, a shamrock drawn in the creamy head on top, and a good dollop of gossip. It may be a craic-worn cliché, but clichés never tasted so good.
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Tour de Fred: Northern Ireland is available to stream on ITVX.
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