A magic place. If you are looking for somewhere to unwind close to Belfast, this is the place. http://www.ballyduganmill.com/.
My folks treated us all to a meal there last night, we stayed over in the bed & breakfast accomodation and it was first class. There are five floors converted, a coffee shop on the ground floor, restaurant on the next, accomodation on the next two and a history exhibition on the top. I think work is still underway on parts of it but that adds to the interest.
The guy who owns it (Noel Killen) did most of the work, he's a master craftsman and converted a lot of it himself, lovely sash windows, exposed wooden beams and loads of old mill fixtures and fittings.
There were a couple of wee lads running around it last night, think they may have been the owners son and his friend. They had been fishing (poaching in fact as you needed a licence), they called Rebecca in to see a fish they had caught, they had lifted a 21lb pike on a 7 foot spinning rod, The thing was over 3 feet long, an absolute monster. The french chef at the place was exstatic, and was going to cook it up, in France Pike (Brochet) is more expensive than Salmon.
The old boy was in great form and was in story telling mood, he wss telling a story about an old boy he used to know who worked on the Clogher Valley railway. Guinness used to be transported up the railway from the main Dublin line, barrels were arriving up to Fivemiletown not quite as full as when they left Dublin. This man was given the task of trying to work out what happened to it, as the barrels were not tampered with when they arrived. He spent a few weeks investigating this, getting on the trains in Dublin following the guinness up and trying to track down where the guinness disappeared. He couldn't work out where it was going missing but reckoned it had something to do with the store where the guinness waited prior to being put on the Clogher Valley Railway.
One night he was at the store, when he announced he was off to the cinema, he took the next train up the line, got off at the next stop and took a taxi back to the store. When he arrived, the scam artists were knocking the metal rings that surround the barrels up , drilling a hole in the barrel, taking out a few pints from each barrel sealing the holes back up with a cork, cutting the cork off, and knocking the rings back down over the holes, and sending them on their way with no sign of them having been tampered with.
His other good one was a story about a few boys he used to work with in Derry, they were heading to Belfast one winter's night and had stopped at a pub in Dungiven for a few pints. They spent a few hours there when they came out it had been snowing quite heavily, they started up the Glenshane, the snow was getting worse as they climbed up the pass, eventually the car could continue no farther, so they abandoned it, and desperately looked around for somewhere to stay, they saw a cottage down in the distance with a fire burning away and lights in the windows. It was late on, but there was people leaving the house so they headed down. They knocked on the door and an elderly lady answered the door, they explained what had happened and could they spend the night, the woman refused, this explained why the others were seen leaving the cottage. So desperate the four men said they would give her a pound each if they could stay, they pleaded with the woman, she explained there was only one room, but the prospect of the four pounds in those days was too much. She told them to wait in the living room while she prepared her room, she would sleep beside the fire and allow the men to sleep in her room, so she disappeared in, there was a lot of banging and moving of furniture.
The men assumed she was getting blankets and pillows so thought nothing of it.
Anyway she soon reappeared and the men settled down for the night in the room, after a few hours, the pints caught up on one of the men, there was no way he was going outside to use the outside toilet, so he looked under the bed, in those days it would not have been uncommon for there to be a chamber pot under the bed. Unfortunately he couldn't find one, so he heads over to the wardrobe, opens it up, and there in the wardrobe was an old boy, dead as a door nail, standing bolt upright in his best suit.
It was the old boy's wake that the other guests had been attending, and the prospect of the four pounds had been to much for the old woman, she lifted him off the bed, put him in the cupboard and allowed the travellers to take the bed.