Ireland: Not just a feast for Game of Thrones fans

Ireland is a feast for 'Game of Thrones' fans but it's just as rich in thrilling - and chilling - true stories. By Sue de Groot

They make it look easy on Game of Thrones (GOT), but archery is not a sport one can master in a morning - not when one is wearing a replica of Jon Snow's fur robe on an unreasonably hot day in Northern Ireland.

"Pull the string towards your good eye," said tutor Fred Conradie (he can tell by looking at a person which is their dominant eye but won't reveal how he does this). "Keep your elbow turned out so the string doesn't graze your arm." Ouch. Another bruise.

The satisfaction of hearing an arrow thwack into the target was vast, but it came as something of a relief when my quiver was empty and we could strip off our costumes for a bicycle ride.

We were at Castle Ward, which serves as Winterfell in GOT. The archery courtyard in which we sweated is the very set on which Jon Snow taught the young Starks how to fire their arrows.

Conradie, dressed the part in a leather doublet, is a South African from Pretoria. He met and married an Irishwoman and now runs the Clearsky Adventure Centre in Northern Ireland. "Glamping" (glamorous camping, where guides pitch the tents and provide the meals) is big business, but he thinks the popularity of GOT might see this part of his operation attracting as many visitors as the Titanic Museum in Belfast.

Castle Ward, dating back to the 1590s, is partly in ruins but the tower (from which young Bran fell and was crippled in the first season of the TV show) is intact. The castle is set in 33km of nature reserve around Strangford Lough, the largest sea inlet in the British Isles. We cycled among wild flowers along the shore and to a coppice of ancient trees, where Conradie paused to show us the site of another gruesome event from GOT.

"That's where the bodies were hanging when Brienne of Tarth found them," he said, pointing to a thick bough above. "And that's the tree she tied Jaime Lannister to."

He showed us the scene on his iPad and we waved our plastic swords around in imitation of the grisly sequence. "Fans get really excited here," said Conradie. "They lie on the ground and stab each other and take pictures."

There are other filming locations to visit. The ruins of Dunluce Castle were the site of many a brothel scene in GOT (the locals queued up to act as extras, said our guide with a wink). Built in about 1500, the castle looks across white cliffs to Royal Port Rush, ranked next to St Andrews in Scotland as the world's top links course. If golf is your thing, a round will cost you £150 (about R2 500).

Another golf club, Gracehill, near the aptly named town of Ballymoney, lent its driveway to the TV crew. Lined with ghostly beech trees (see cover picture), this is the King's Road in GOT.

Drive along the coast past sheep-strewn fields and blue-flag beaches and you reach pretty little Ballintoy Harbour (Pyke Harbour in GOT, with a lot of digital enhancement).

A thousand or so years before the harbour was built, the Romans are said to have landed on this shore. It was a rainy day, so they came, saw, and went away, calling Ireland "a dark and forbidding place populated by savages". Had they landed on a day such as we had, things might have gone differently. Fragrant sunshine sparkled on the water and children splashed around in the shallows.

Ireland's causeway coastal route does not only attract Throneheads. Seekers of beauty come from all over the planet to see the spectacular Giant's Causeway and other attractions. We walked across a rope bridge to Carrick-a-Rede island (pictured) and saw Arctic terns nesting on the cliffs.

Some might visit these parts for their place in a television fantasy, but Ireland is just as rich in real history, some of it equally bloody. Two nights before our archery lesson we were in Derry - called Londonderry by the British - site of the infamous Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972.

Martin McCrossan, a guide who has won more tourism awards than can fit on his brochure, took us on a walking tour of the city. In the accent of the region ("mull" for mill, "keyar" for car and "keyestle" for castle), he told tales of conflict and reconciliation: the Catholic priest who helped rebuild a Protestant church; the man who made peace with the soldier who shot and blinded him as a child - together they now run a charity for children caught in crossfire.

Derry's peace is recent and there are still pockets of unease but evidence of goodwill is everywhere. An elegant Peace Bridge, built in 2013, crosses the River Foyle to the once-feared Ebrington Barracks, where British soldiers were stationed during the long years of trouble. When peace finally came, the vacated barracks were handed over to the city on condition the buildings were shared between all.

On the other side of the river is a small Peace Park, paved with stones on which schoolchildren have carved their wishes for the city. "We are all the same and peace is very important"; "Reach out across the river and unite this divided city"; "The smoke has cleared, the noise is gone, our city is full of kindness, hope and song."

The troubles in the North, long and brutal as they were, are but a blip in the much longer history of Ireland. Our tour began in Dublin and ended in Belfast (pictured below), doing a loop in between that took in the southern reaches.

Everywhere we found evidence of Ireland's ability to marry the worst of yesterday to the best of today. The Irish National Famine Museum in Strokestown, County Roscommon, combines these opposites. A sombre building, which contains the country's most comprehensive collection of exhibits from the Irish Famine, hunkers in the shadow of a great house in which the lives of the gentry are preserved.

Curator John O'Driscoll gives a vivid account of famine victims with great compassion, but has just as much affection for the eccentric, upper-class ghosts he tends in the manor house, where resided several generations of the Anglo-Irish Pakenham-Mahon family. (Thomas Pakenham, known to South Africans for his writings on wars and trees, is a distant relative.)

In the 19th century, Ireland lost half its population to starvation and emigration. Those who left the country did so on "coffin ships" which set sail from the harbour town of Cobh, County Cork, which at the time was known as Queenstown. On the pier is a statue of Annie Moore and her two brothers, the first emigrants to be processed at Ellis Island in New York.

Titanic was built in Belfast, and the museum dedicated to the doomed ship in that city is a multimedia marvel. The museum in Cobh, where Titanic stopped to pick up passengers before heading out to sea, is on a far smaller scale but equally moving. In the passage that leads to where ships once docked, I told the guard that my maternal grandfather had left from here to go to South Africa, probably on a ship collecting soldiers after the Anglo-Boer War.

"Well now, he would have come right this way," the guard said. "You're standing where he walked."

No matter how well made it is, no fantasy TV series can deliver the sort of shivering thrill that gave me.

- Sue de Groot was a guest of Tourism Ireland

GETTING THERE

• There are no direct flights from SA to Ireland, but it is a short hop from airports in the UK on Aer Lingus, the Irish national carrier. Visit aerlingus.com.
• If you are not part of a tour, hiring a car and driving yourself around is the best way to see the country.
• Tourism Ireland, which represents both Failte Ireland (Republic of Ireland) and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board in SA, can give advice on planning your trip and provide information regarding accommodation, routes, tours and places of interest. Call 011 463 1132, e-mail tourismireland@devprom.co.za or visit ireland.com.