Get your ups in Co. Down
Malcolm Rogers journeys to the Co. Down holiday resort of Newcastle to paddle and picnic.
 Stick a pin anywhere on the Irish coastline and you’re likely to hit on an unspoilt beach with a sleepy fishing village attached. If you hit really lucky you’ll come up with somewhere like Newcastle, which has all the standard features of any eastern Irish harbour town, with an overlay of a British seaside resort circa 1950. One of the finest strands in Europe runs some five miles along Dundrum Bay to Murlough Strand, and into Inner Dundrum Bay, where you can see myriad wildfowl taking shelter or the harbour seal sunning itself.
Plus, Newcastle has been granted one huge gift from God — this is where the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to see. The huge granite hulk of Slieve Donard dominates the town — it would put you in mind of somewhere in the Alps if it weren’t for the ever present sound of the sea.
It’s all extremely attractive and charming.
Funnily enough, the one thing Newcastle doesn’t have is a castle, either new or ancient. The Magenises, the Lords of Iveagh, built a New Castle here in 1588, but it’s long gone.
Newcastle is the commonest name for a town in Ireland, and although it sounds a tad unimaginative, the word speaks volumes. As every wave of invader arrived to replace the established order, old castles would be attacked, razed to the ground, and new ones built — in the middle ages it cost about £10 to build a castle. This of course was a king’s ransom way back then — and indeed a king’s ransom might have been quite literally how the money was raised.
Apart from the disappearance of the castle, this delightful Co. Down town seems almost to occupy a time warp.
But that apart, everything else in Newcastle seems largely unchanged. You can still sit at the harbour, easel in front of you, and paint the idyllic scene of Dundrum Bay stretching out to the lighthouse at St. John’s Point (where Brendan Behan once worked) with the Mountains of Mourne as a spectacular backdrop.
Or you could equally as well go mountaineering. The afore-mentioned Slieve Donard is some 2,796 ft high, but is an easy enough climb. It must be one of the few summits where you can actually start on the beach, make your way through Donard Park, into Newcastle Forest, up along the delightful Glen River — and about two hours later you have one of the most magnificent views in Ireland. On a clear day you can see across to the Isle of Man and Scotland; to the south lies Leinster, and to the north the rich plain of the ancient Kingdom of Ulaidh.
 The stupendous views and bracing mountain air apart, many people travel to Newcastle for one very specific reason — play on what is generally reckoned to be one of the world’s finest golf courses, the Royal County Down. However, it’ll cost you. Generally speaking in Ireland, if any golf course has the word ‘royal’ in front of it, you can double the green fees.
The Royal County Down is one of the world’s great courses, originally designed for £4.00 by Old Tom Morris, a name synonymous with St. Andrews. This is where Tiger Woods, Ernie Els et al practice before the British Open. Its notoriously vicious bunkers which pock the greens like snipers’ dugouts are a test for the world’s greatest golfers. Outside of the top elite, the definition of a golfer is somebody who yells “Fore!”, takes 14, and writes down three. Here you might have to double that number — it’s that much of a challenge.
Founded in 1889 Royal County Down is part of golf history as well as being one of the most spectacular anywhere. With the Irish Sea an ever present companion and Slieve Donard framing every shot you’ll have your work cut out to concentrate on the six or seven blind tee shots.
Every hole at Royal County Down is distinctive, from the par-five first, to the final 18th when you might have time to appreciate the full grandeur of the Mournes sweeping down to Dundrum Bay. And afterwards of course, you can relax in the Percy French bar.
Newcastle is the ideal centre for touring through the Kingdom of Mourne. Aside from the mountains there are two of the North’s finest forest parks nearby — Tollymore and Castlewellan. The first is a two-mile drive outside the town (along the Bryansford Road) and boasts some remarkable walks through arboretums, past Victorian follies, and along salmon-packed rivers — the Shimna and the Spinkwee. Castlewellan, about four miles from Newcastle, boasts one of the most famous gardens in the north. Here the ubiquitous cypress tree, the Castlewellan Gold, seen nowadays throughout these islands, had its origins.
But it’s not all magnolias and ornamental hedges — there are rugged hill climbs in Castlewellan forest as well, and every so often in the clearings of European larch you catch spectacular views across the Moneyscalp lowlands, past the low drumlin country where Patrick Brontë (father of the famous authoresses) grew up, to the peaks of Butter Mountain, Spelga and Clonachullion.
Just outside Newcastle on the southerly side, along the coast road at the Balloch, you can take the old smugglers’ path through the mountains — or as much of them as you feel up to. Dump the jalopy at the Bloody Bridge and take a tramp along the Brandy Pad. You’ll eventually come to Poulaphouca — the Glen of the Fairies — which leads on to the Hare’s Gap and along the slopes of Slievenaglogh.
Finally the ‘Castles of Commedagh’ — a mighty battlement of towers and turrets of solid granite fashioned by Mother Nature herself will heave into view. If you walk far enough along this path, and cross the Trassey River, you’ll eventually come to Hilltown, a place which seems to have far more than its fair share of pubs. Can anybody down the back guess the reason? Correct — this is where, according to legend, the smugglers, fresh off the Brandy Pad, repaired in order to celebrate a good night’s work. Having safely stowed their liquor, tobacco, tea, silk and soap (often brought from the Isle of Man, sometimes Britain) the hardy smugglers would make their way down to Dooley’s or the like and sink a feed of gargle, as they say in these parts.
But you don’t need to even stir outside Newcastle to have a bracing walk. You can merely stroll along the promenade. Starting at the Slieve Donard hotel you can wend your away along the beach to where the Shimna River pours into the sea. There are numerous coffee shops and restaurants en route should you want to break off your journey at any point, and there’s a public library overlooking the river which is an absolute mine of local information.
About a mile further along you’ll come to the harbour, and the welcome sign of the Harbour Bar. From here you can watch the sailing boats coming and going, and perhaps the lifeboat going through its manoeuvres. At any rate there will be something happening outside the windows of the pub to keep your interest as you sink your pint to the accompaniment of snatches of conversation from the locals. (“Sez he aye, so sez I no…”)
It would be difficult to exaggerate the charms of Newcastle and the Mournes. The view along the Main Street of Co. Down’s Newcastle is not unique in just Ireland — it must be one of the truly great urban views in the world, with the huge crag of Slieve Donard almost rising directly out of the sea and dominating the town. It’s a view, I suspect, which must support an entire postcard industry.
Factfile…
Newcastle is just shy of 30 miles south of Belfast. There is a frequent Ulsterbus service and also tours. Telephone 00 44 28 90 333000 for timetable, tours 00 44 28 90 337 004 or Travel Centre 00 44 28 90 320 011
For all Translink bus & rail enquiries:
Telephone 028 9033 3000
Textphone 028 9035 4007
Email: feedback@translink.co.uk
Newcastle Tourist Office: 028 437 22222
For information on sporting activities in the area (including mountain climbing) contact the Sports Council for Northern Ireland: 028 90 381222
Royal County Down golf course: 028 4372 3314. |
