he border in Ireland loops and staggers over
300 miles of countryside like a plotline full of
digressions, slicing through towns and farms
and, it is said, the kitchen of an old man’s cottage.
It was drawn by the British government in the
early 1920s to comprise the largest amount of Ulster that
Unionists could then dominate. Unionists were told it was
permanent, Nationalists that it was provisional. In practice it
removed from British politics the question of how the people
of Ireland might live together.
I rst met it over 40 years ago coming in from Donegal on
the Letterkenny-Omagh bus. There was a checkpoint. Tense
British soldiers with ngers on triggers and a Rolodex full of
mugshots moved along the aisle peering into our faces. One
brush of a feather, it seemed, and they’d go o like landmines.
Finally, they stepped down. We crept on. Strabane was in
ames. Sirens wailed. People ran for cover. It was an ordinary
day in Northern Ireland, but I’d never seen anything like it.
The border was marked by watchtowers, dynamited roads
and hovering helicopters. Farmers were forced to make
long detours to get to their elds. Towns were cut o from
hinterlands. Economies faded; smugglers thrived. Then came
the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the whole apparatus
came down like the stages and tents at the end of a festival.
I drove along the border over a few late spring days and
couldn’t nd it. Sometimes the satellite navigator exclaimed
“CAUTION: BORDER CROSSING”. There might be an old
customs shed covered in vines and with an oak growing from
the oce. Signs pointed out whether the speed limit was in
kilometres or miles. But otherwise the border appeared to
have evaporated.Tourists generally visit Ireland for the graces or hooleys
of Dublin or the Technicolour splendours of the West.
The borderlands tend to be overlooked. But there is great
beauty here, of forest and glen, mountain and wild windy
coast. It’s still emphatically rural in a way that most of the
western world has forsaken. And it has that allure I was
rst introduced to by a Belfast taxi driver whose card read
“Tours—Scenic and Political”.
From the east the border comes in as the Vikings did,
up Carlingford Lough (ford from the Norse ord), the blue
Mourne Mountains owing down to the sea in County Down,
the Cooleys on the left in Louth. In the Cooleys you’ll nd
Medb’s Gap, where the warrior Cúchulainn defended Ulster
against the raging forces of Medb, Queen of Connacht,
lashing himself to a rock to stay upright. Myth, as elsewhere
in Ireland, is tangible in the borderlands, if you are so minded:
Balor of the Evil Eye, the Red Branch Knights, the entrance
to the Underworld through the Cave of Cats in Roscommon.
You can touch the indistinct intersection of myth and
archaeology at Emain Macha, the remains of a gigantic Iron
Age temple dedicated to the goddess Macha and noted by
the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy. Long horns, gold
ornaments and the skull of a Barbary ape were excavated
here. Beside it is the informative and entertaining Navan
Centre, where you can banter with actors playing ancient
Celts who will show you their houses and gardens and
pretend to know nothing of Taylor Swift or Gerry Adams orBOARDER PATROL
Above: Surfer Cian
Logue after riding a
wave at Bundoran,
a popular seaside
resort in County
Donegal, close to
the border with
Northern Ireland.
Right: the County
River follows the
line of the border
between County
Fermanagh,
Northern Ireland,
and County Leitrim,
Republic of IrelandT
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