14 TREW’S TRAVELS


INTER is not ideal for a break in Portrush — unless your annual holiday budget is restricted and you need to rely on off-season deals (what my bargain-hunter brother Gary calls “wee cheapies”). Nevertheless, a New Year fit of nostalgia prompted me to head north to The Port, a seaside resort that has meant a lot to me since my youth.


That’s because, unlike most travel journalists, I am proud to have worked at the coalface of the tourism industry throughout my teenage years and beyond. It was in Portrush that I gained insights and first-hand knowledge of how the tourism business operates that have served me well, not only as a specialist freelance journalist and copywriter, but also as a daily newspaper Editor.


From the age of 15, I worked during my holidays in the kitchens and dining-room of the SEABANK HOTEL, built upon a Victorian terrace overlooking the famous Arcadia Ballroom which is probably the most beautifully - sited dance-hall in the world, located on a promontory washed by Atlantic waves. The Seabank is now a highly-regarded Residential Home. It made the headlines last Easter, when a neighbouring building caught fire, but the Seabank and its residents are made of solid stuff and survived the threat — thanks to caring staff and efficient fire services. Indeed, I had actually intended to visit the Seabank


on my latest break at ‘The Port’ last month. It’s nearly a year since I was shocked to my socks when when I first saw the footage of the next-door blaze in the middle of 2017 Easter Holidays. I shouted with relief at the TV screen when I saw the place and its residents were unscathed. However, January’s Atlantic gale deterred me from going down Bath Terrace to check personally that the Seabank’s distinctive façade was intact. Alas, the freezing-cold wind just happened to blow me into the congenial GROUND Espresso Bar located on Main Street just before I reached the alleyway to the Seabank Hotel’s back entrance.


I revived over an Americano, with a nice crema created by a well-trained barista. I reminisced about Easters of long ago and summer holidays when I kissed my Mum goodbye-for-now in late June and swopped East Belfast for the East Strand, spending the next six weeks working for two remarkable spinster sisters, the Misses Fitzpatrick. They spent the rest of the year running the Belgravia Private Hotel on Belfast’s Ulsterville Avenue.


Miss May was known by staff as ‘a wee bit of a targe', but lovely Miss Lily was invariably ‘a soft-touch’ to everyone. I loved them both. On my tearful last day, after three summers in their employ, they presented me with an expensive Conway Stewart fountain pen. I still have it. Somewhere.


I started as a Kitchen Porter the lowest of the low in every hotel hierarchy - scrubbing grease-encrusted casserole dishes in scalding water; picking the snails out of the cabbages and lettuces we cut in our organic allotment near Metropole Corner; gutting the mackerel delivered by the fishermen who caught them off the Skerries on the morning tide in wee boats that adorned the harbour for the rest of the day while the skippers snoozed in the bookies’ between races.


I was promoted to waiter after I nearly severed a finger while carrying a big tray of steaming boiled chickens from the hob; I bumped into the narrow doorway of the Cold Room, slicing my finger on the jagged edge of the tray. The Head Porter drove me at 80mph in the hotel’s pre-war limousine to Coleraine Casualty where my dangling digit was expertly stitched back with the admonition: “Do not immerse wound in hot water!” That’s why I swopped my KP’s dungarees


PORTRUSH ATLANTIC


HOTEL, where we stayed, is the latest name for the town’s


biggest hotel, on a prime site with exceptional views of the Ocean and the Skerries


rocks, which were a great mark for


mackerel fishing from a boat


February 2018 Travel News


Taste of the Port warms up winter W


JOHN TREW seeks to re-live his youth...


for a waiter’s white bum-freezer jacket … and suddenly discovered that I was a natural for a job that was far less exhausting and much more enjoyable. Indeed, with personal tips, I also doubled my weekly income. During those sizzling summers between my 15th year and going to university, I found that a crisp jacket and shiny shoes acted as an potent babe-magnet far beyond my schoolboy dreams. Having to smile and do what I was told, helped me to make friends with the teenage daughters of families often booking in for one or even two fulll weeks which would be unheard of today. Many clean-living families favoured the Seabank because no alcohol was served. I had my own little attic room with a panoramic view of the Arcadia, White Rocks and beyond. My wife Karen yawns every time we visit The Port and I point to the third dormer window on the left side of the Seabank roof.


I always say: “Did I ever tell you about the bedroom where…? “Yes”, she invariably interrupts me before I finish the sentence: “About 734 times”.


‘Mission I Am Possible’ for the Grounded Gardiners


WHILE I thawed out over my coffee in Portrush, I used the free wi-fi on my iPad and was intrigued to discover that Darren Gardiner, local founder of the fast-growing number of GROUND Espresso Bars in Northern Ireland, started his career in catering in his early teens — like Yours Trewly!


“I began work cleaning tables for Morelli’s in Portstewart when I was a 12 year-old “, he is quoted on the company website that is promoted all over the score or so GROUND locations that have been opened since 2001 (my own favourite is Bangor West). Darren worked part-time at the iconic ice-cream/café throughout his schooldays and holidays and seemed to learn a lot more from his mentor Nino Morelli than I did from Miss May and Miss Lily Fitzpatrick at the Seabank.


Maybe that’s why Darren is now one of our most successful catering chain entrepreneurs and I am not! He shares with his wife, operations director Karen, a


vision to become the only chain of coffee bars in Northern Ireland that can maintain a local, family friendly, welcoming atmosphere in partnership with excellent coffees served with innovation, in an ethical manner. They already employ nearly 300 people in stand-alone espresso bars in the Province and in Next concessions across the water. On their site they feature prominently four key attributes: Integrity, Responsibility, Kindness and Innovation and also quotes this attribution from Audrey Hepburn “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible.” Quite frankly, I am often put off companies which quote a lot of ‘management-book mumbo-jumbo’ but I am always impressed when I actually visit a new (to me) GROUND location and see the toys and storybooks in the kids’ section and frequently-cleaned toilets for everyone, including disabled.


Perhaps surprisingly, as I am World President of T- POTS (The Preservation of Tea and Scones), I hereby


BALLROOM OF ROMANCE: The legendary Arcadia Ballroom was overlooked by my attic staff-room in the Seabank Hotel (further up the hill on Bath Terrace). Back in the late 1950s, I worked there as a teenage waiter. I spent many of my nights-off in the Ballroom during the summer residencies of the DAVE GLOVER SHOWBAND and later was friendly with many of its musicians — Trixie Hamilton, Muriel Day, Big Joe, Tony Morelli etc when I became Ulster’s leading Showbiz Journalist in my twenties


award my highest accolade to the Gardiners — not for preserving tea and scones — but for the quality of their fair-trade coffee, sourced from Honduras farmers they know by name, and for innovative treats that are ousting traditional scones, such as Mint Aero Muffin… well done!


Nostalgia is Not What It Used To Be


WALKING down Portrush Main Street was a real nostalgia trip for me. HILLIS’s drapery shop looked almost exactly like it was in the 1950s when I was buying my new underwear there instead of laundering the pants I already had. I was a great friend of Maurice Hillis at the Queen’s Jazz Club; he was a Chemistry wizard who went to England. I always drop into THE WHITE HOUSE, a department store that has moved with the times to survive, with a great café/restaurant upstairs and an appealing stock of the latest appliances such as a range of Nespresso machines to match any city store. I was tempted to buy one in their sale — but good common- sense prevailed. That’s because I already own a Nespresso machine (fed by great-value compatible CAFEPODS) and who needs two of them? The only Main Street store with a truly global reputation is TROGGS SURF SHOP, now over a quarter-century in business supplying the growing surfing community with


hard-and soft-boards,


wetsuits, trendy tee-shirts, beanies and every other kind of niche surf-gear.


I remember Trogg’s from the start because the owner, Ireland’s leading surf pioneer, IAN HILL (80- years-old this month!) shared the same name with my best friend, the late Fermanagh-born arts journalist Ian J Hill. The Portrush Ian’s photographer son ANDY HILL is the six-time Irish surfing champion who now runs the family business - which includes Ireland’s first Five-Star Hostel, the PORTRUSH TOWNHOUSE - with wife FRANKIE. The shop and associated Surf School are busy on-line because their Facebook and Twitter surfing feeds are followed by thousands of enthusiasts worldwide. Their exclusive clothing line in pom-pom beanies, as it happened, led me to the next-door hairdressers which resulted in my happiest hour of the year so far! I had earlier spotted NICO’S TURKISH


BARBERS on the seaward side of Main Street, with a guy busy going in and out to his car wearing distinctive Trogg-branded beanie headgear with a huge white pom-pom. “Come in out of this wind and we’ll warm you up,” he invited. So that’s how I indulged in a treat to make the most of my bleak mid- winter break in my teenage favourite seaside resort. I experienced one of my best-ever haircut and beard-trim combos. As Nico became busy with early-morning admin, his young Turkish colleague Cristo took over. As I had an hour to spare, in which to digest my heavy hotel breakfast, I ordered up ‘The Works’ which included a carefully layered haircut, an open-razor shave, lots of scented hot towels, a beard-trim and a stimulating head massage, finished off with the best shoulder rub I've ever had (well, from a man anyway!). As I paid Cristo with nearly all the pocket-money I carried for the whole day,


As I stood at the till of the three-man shop — one more and they could form a Barbershop Quartet — I


recalled my first-ever traditional Turkish treatment by VEYSI YAZGAN, the Brilliant Barber of Bodrum, who opened his first barbershop in Bangor after making his reputation in the Cambridge on Belfast’s Lisburn Road. I became one of his many regulars. I will never forget dropping in for a trim on the day his Irish Passport arrived. In his excitement he took off more hair than I had to spare — but he refused to take my money!


Portrush hotels do hot deals to dispel the cold


BIGGEST biggest on Main Street are two of the town’s most popular hotels, the PORTRUSH ATLANTIC and the ADELPHI next door.. At the time of writing, one of these is Number 1 out of eight Portrush hotels in the TripAdvisor Traveller Ratings and the other is No 4. But which is which? ANSWER is at bottom of this story. There are always good-value deals available to put bums into beds during the low seasons.


We stayed at the hotel now known as the Portrush Atlantic. It is on the site of an iconic Victorian railway hotel, the famous NORTHERN COUNTIES which mysteriously burnt down in 1990. It was replaced by a bland building of 70 rooms whose brandings changed enough times to cause confusion, being identified as the Hotel Comfort Portrush, the Ramada Portrush, the Ramada Encore, Portrush etc. The name Portrush Atlantic is an improvement on all the others, having been re-branded by the owners of Derry/Londonderry’s City Hotel when it was launched as a sister hotelk. I always stay at the City when I’m at the Jazz/Big Band Festival up there, because they very kindly let me have free overnight storage of a bulky Shopmobility scooter.


Frankly, I have not experienced - nor required - that level of service at the Portrush sister hotel. They let me store my bag free after telling me that it cost £10 an hour extra to stay in the room, if I did not vacate it by 11am, That was fine by me as I had no intention of going back for a nap after a full - and perfectly pleasant - breakfast.


As it happens, on arrival the evening before, we had an unremarkable dinner in the same Counties Restaurant where breakfast is served. We sat at the window overlooking the public square of green lawns - featuring a highly-decorated red-brick mini- monument deserving of a close-up inspection - running down to the COASTAL ZONE visitor attraction on the rocky shoreline washed by wild ocean waves which most guests can see from their guest room windows . Yes, the best thing about the Portrush Atlantic is the view of the Atlantic.


In contrast, the Adelphi next door is a cosy 4-star boutique hotel and bistro run by a team whose faces and stories adorn the promotional literature and website. That pride in its people always gives a good impression.It also operates the town’s only Health Suite and Spa and is therefore beloved by hen parties and well-heeled clientele. * THE ANSWER to the question in the first paragraph is that the smaller Adelphi (current winner of NI Boutique Hotel of the Year) is No.1 of 8 hotels in the town. Portrush Atlantic is rated No.4 in the same Tripadvisor Traveller Ratings


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