Portballintrae And Bushmills

PortBallintrae Village and Harbour
[Kyle]My original plan had been to stay in the Skerries a couple of days and explore the islands but they were too rocky to allow for a safe landing in the dinghy, plus the seals didn’t have wifi. We decided to move the boat over to the much better protected but not as pretty little harbour at Portballintrae. There were no other boats in the harbour (suspicious) so we anchored Footprint right in the middle. We found wifi we could pay for and then went ashore for a look around the town.

There was no town. Portballintrae does have a couple of businesses but is basically just a cluster of uncharacteristically large houses nestled up against the beach. We walked about a mile out of town one way then decided to turn back and see if ‘town’ was the other way. After two or three more miles, we had changed towns altogether and ended up in Bushmills. Well, since we were already here, we decided we just had to do the distillery tour. I think we’re getting to the point where we are not getting anything out of a tour of the mechanics of the distilling process but there is a sample included. For our sample, we chose the 12 year old single malt and the 1608 Reserve (to commemorate their 400th anniversary). Both were nice. I liked the 1608. It tasted more like a Scottish whisky, Maryanne preferred the 12 year old.


Bushmills Town and Kyle sampling at the distillery
We had a pleasant walk back through the town along the Bush River. Bushmills is definitely a Loyalist town. Northern Ireland does this Crips and Bloods thing with some of their towns. Towns are decorated in red, white and blue or green, white and orange, depending on which side they are on. I’m sure they think of it as a pride thing, but to me, it just seems to scream ‘if you’re not on our side, you’re not welcome here’. It’s a lot like the Confederate flag in the Southern U.S.

Anywho, we walked back into Portballintrae along part of the long footpath that stretches for miles along this coast. This took us along the river and through fields until it eventually wound through dunes to the beach. We managed to get back to Footprint just minutes before it started raining in earnest.