Ireland Day 10 - Maghera and Giant's Causeway

We are now up to day 10 of our Ireland honeymoon vacation.  We dedicated most of day 10 to visiting the area of Northern Ireland where some of Annmarie's family comes from, just outside of Maghera.  The town is known as Swatragh and it is the hometown of the Slamon family and Annmarie's mom is a Slamon! Annmarie's Uncle Tim Slamon, who has been doing some ancestry research, lined up a meeting for us with one of his contacts, Mary Bradley.  We met at a hotel in Maghera and spent some time talking over coffee and cookies with Mary and a gentlemen she brought along with her, James O'Kane.  James's grandmother, Mary, was a Slamon.  We took off from there for a tour of the area.  First stop was at the local church where the Slamons would have worshipped.  We were able to view the grave of a James Slamon, the one Slamon they knew was in the church's cemetary.  Here is the grave:

From there we went to some property that belonged to the Slamon family many years ago.  In one of the historical recordings of the Slamon family, a reference is made to a huge stone marker that was on the Slamon farm land.  We had the opportunity to go out and see this stone marker and stand in what was a field belonging to the Slamons.  Here is Am at the stone marker:

From there we stopped in at the property of Willie Quinn.  Willie's grandmother was actually another Mary Slamon (not the same as James's grandmother).  Willie shared with us some stories about his grandmother and explained that she had died right there at the house on his property.  Am and Willie hit it off right away and Willie asked if we would come back that evening and join him and his wife for dinner.  We agreed and hit the road again with Mary and James.  Here is Am with Willie.  The house in the background is actually the house that Mary Slamon lived and died in:

From there it was off to a wallstead that was the home of James's grandmother, Mary Slamon (are you confused yet?).  This was extremely cool!  While there were modern houses all around, the originally walls to the house in which Mary had grown up were still standing.  We found this fascinating!  Here is a picture of the walls:

Next stop was the home of Frank McKendry.  While Frank has no family connection to the Slamons, he does know that his family bought their land from Harry Slamon years ago.  He was gracious enough to show us around his property and give us some historical information of the area.  This is a picture of Am with Frank McKendry.  The actual house that the Slamons lived in on this property had been removed several years before but it stood just behind where they are standing.

With this we headed back to Walsh's hotel.  Am and I were going to head for Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and then come back to have dinner with the Quinns and Mary Bradley.  We said our goodbyes to James O'Kane who was hands down one of the nicest gentlemen we had ever met.  Here is Am with James in front of Walsh's.

Am and I quickly ran in and reserved a room for the night and then hit the road.  Giant's Causeway was about an hour north of Maghera and is a very big tourist attraction in Northern Ireland.  We arrived only to find that you had to park in a lot off of the property and be bused in.  Once you arrive on the property, you have to take another bus to actually get to the Causeway.  But when we arrived, we found it was all worth it!  The Causeway is absolutely beautiful.  It is made up of 40,000 basalt columns supposedly formed from an ancient volcanic eruption.  I personally think God was just having some fun.  You can walk out on the rocks that jut out into the ocean and you find yourself far enough out that the waves are crashing all around you.  You actually have to be fairly careful because when the big waves come in, they crash up over the rocks and you can find yourself quite wet!  I still haven't figured out what went wrong but I had something funky going on with on eof my settings on my camera so the pictures did not turn out very good.  But I have done my best to salvage them.  Here is Giant's Causeway:

We headed back for Maghera and got settled into our hotel.  We, once again, ended up with a really cool room at a really good price.  Here is our room at Walsh's:

Mary picked us up for dinner but we decided to meet an hour early so we could swing by the house of Shemus O'Kane.  Shemus had an awesome land certificate from 1908 that shows that the land he owns was purchased from a James Slamon.  He had agreed to let us take pictures of the land certificate but he also wanted to meet us.  We had a blast hanging out with Shemus and his family.  In one of those "it's a small world after all" moments, we found that Shemus's son is a Chartered Financial Analyst and the certificate on his wall was from Charlottesville, Virginia (just an hour from where we live in Richmond).  Pat O'Kane also stopped by and introduced himself as James O'Kane's brother.  We had a great visit before heading off to dinner.  Here is Am with the O'Kane family and a shot of the land certificate:

As we were walking out, Pat asked if we wanted to run across the street to see his son's workshop where he makes Hurley sticks for the Irish sport of hurling.  This was very cool!  They actually can put images on the sticks and a popular one in Ireland is to have your wedding picture put on the stick.  We promised Pat that we would send them one of our wedding pics so he can have a stick made for us.  Of course, we were also told that we would have to come back to visit to pick it up.  We agreed!

From there we went to a great restaurant and met Willie and his wife Susan.  We had a fantastic time!  Willie's daughter, Joanie, had wanted to come but was tied up with work.  We were trying to figure out if we could make it work to meet her the next day.  We decided to head for Belfast where she lives and to connect with her over dinner the following night.  After a fanastic evening of hearing great stories about the area, we said our goodnights and hit the road.  We truly felt like we were saying goodbye to family. 

I can't even begin to convey how grateful we were for this day.  We had so much fun and felt so welcomed and loved by everyone that we met.  A HUGE thank you goes out to Mary Bradley for taking a day off from work to show us around and for introducing us to so many people. And thanks to everyone that we had the blessing to meet.  You were all extremely hospitable and we are anxious to get back to spend some more time with you!