14 TREW’S TRAVELS


June 2018 Travel News


A summer of beauty and beasts... J


UNE IS MY BIRTHDAY month which is why I was born with a sunny disposition — a useful trait in a travel journalist.


Unfortunately, my AccuWeather app predicts this year that my birth date of June 18 (I bet you always knew I was a Gemini - amusing but devious!) will be affected by “spotty rain showers”, whatever they are. This year I will be the Birthday Boy on the same date as Father’s Day and Suzy will be coming over from Edinburgh, burdened with too many presents, as usual, combining both celebrations.


Anyway, the weather for the month of June looks promising for outdoor activities as well as indoors , which is why I am sharing just a few of the thousand or so festivals, special events and attractions on offer during one of the busiest months in the Northern Ireland tourism calendar — for adult fare as well as kids’ stuff.


Before I forget,ahem, I will start with Cupcake Day, with fundraising teas and events at various venues on June 14. For details, call your local branch of …of… oh yes, the Alzheimer’s Society. (That is an affectionate wee joke as I’m a proud supporter of the Society!) At the other end of the age-scale, let me warn youngsters that Dinosaurs will be on the prowl at W5 Interactive Discovery Centre, Belfast’s world class family attraction, from early June. I was in at the very start of W5, writing promotional materials and advising on making it attractive to ‘kidults’ (like me). I have watched with admiration how it has managed to maintain its reputation for making science and other serious stuff FUN. I am delight to see that refurbishment is already under way on W5’s new £4.5 million programme to reinvigorate the whole visitor experience, due for completion in 2020.


From June 6 until the end of the summer,


DINOSAUR ENCOUNTER will thrill kidults with amazing animatronic beasts that move and roar. My grand-nephew Owen has been infatuated with dinos from birth and was able to pronounce the latin name ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex’ when he was hardly out of nappies! I will make a point of taking him to encounter W5’s astonishingly lifelike version which is 12ft high and 22ft long, now that he is at primary school (Owen, not the dinosaur!). I should add a wee warning - the last time I was at a similar show one poor child near us became very distressed, so ensure that your own kids are able for it. NB: this show is included in the normal W5 admission price which is always value for money anyway.


BELFAST BOOK FAIR, June 6-16. It’s the night of June 9 at the S


I am just about to book tickets for a gig at the STRAND ARTS CENTRE (looking


very much like the Strand Cinema on the Holywood Road where I first exercised my management skills as a 10 year-old Row Monitor at the Saturday morning ABC Minors Matinee.) It’s a talk by American writer Ryan H.Walsh called Astral Weeks: The Music And The Myths Of Van Morrison accompanied by a tribute band led by the accomplished local singer/songwriter Donal Scullion.


Regular readers know that ‘Astral Weeks’ is not only my favourite album after ‘Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five 1927’, but the finest album EVER recorded,after Frank Sinatra’s ‘Songs for Swingin’ Lovers’ and the soundtrack album of ‘West Side Story’. Put that in your eclectic music pipe and smoke it, Mr


By Award- Winning Travel Writer JOHN TREW


Eamon Friel, presenter of Songbook, the best Radio Ulster Music programme by far… after Hugo Duncan,of course.


While I am giving a ‘shout-out’ to the Book Festival, I should mention that they have organised a Literary Crawl of South Belfast on the last day, Sat 16th, taking in the newly refurbished T


TROPICAL RAVINE in


Botanic Gardens. This wonderful jungle garden, which is explored from above, is a must-see for tourists and local garden-lovers. On our first visit after re-opening we met a Dutch couple who took our photo for their travel blog on the Gardens; next, we took our family on the first hot day of 2018 and we had to leave the steaming jungle early, because our 18 year-old grandson Simon became over-heated and needed a refreshing slider from the ice-cream van he saw temptingly parked outside.


Increasing appetite for Foodie Festivals


AMONG this month’s increasingly numerous foodie fiestas associated with local produce, I commend the BUSHMILLS SALMON & WHISKEY Festival which promotes two world-class products which originate almost within sight of the town centre where homegrown celebrity chef Paula McIntyre will be cooking with both of them on June 16-17 as part of a feast of family entertainment. As a teetotaller, I don’t drink whiskey and salmon would not be among my top five fish, but I LOVED a signature starter by my sorely missed friend, the late,great Robbie Millar— Ulster’s best-ever chef, according to Paul Rankin. It was so simple: just thin salmon slices,hot smoked over Old Bushmills Whiskey barrel wood chips and served with crisp radishes carved into roses. Subtle, smokily spirituous flavours. Magic. OMG, pass the pills, I’m starting to sound like Joris Minne!


(Message to Paula—I will let you have Robbie’s full recipe if you promise to give a taste-sample to John Toal on your slot in his Saturday Radio Ulster prog. I still owe him for a lift he gave me when we were going to an out-of-town Press Conference years ago…) On the subject of spirits, Shortcross Gin, one of our many new entrepreneurial companies to jump upon the latest global distilling phenomenon, is hosting a blistering afternoon of Food, Gin and Blues at RADEAMON ESTATE Crossgar on June 3 . I am mentioning this for two reasons — the band is led my my all-time favourite local bluesman (and friend) RONNIE GREER who should feature that appropriate old Bessie Smith number, Gin House Blues, with its soulful lyrics: “I’m goin' to the gin house / sit there by myself / I mean to drown my sorrows/ with sweet somebody else…” The other reason is that Dexter Beef will be on offer from Finnebrogue Woods. I have


BLOOMING UNBELIEVABLE: Travel News Columnist and amateur ceramicist J


JOHN TREW


created this artwork (seen here on his studio floor) for display among many others by leading professional artists, at the annual F


EXHIBITION which will run from June 2-24 in the enchanting B


ForM SCULPTURE BANGOR CASTLE WALLED GARDEN.


John’s sculptural installation celebrates the beauty of the seasons in this world-class garden, with tiles featuring annual flowers, vegetables and roses plus exotic fruits like apricots grown in the refurbished Victorian hothouse near the Café. Free admission. Open daily from 10am.


BOOTS ON for the MOURNE WALKING FESTIVAL marking two decades of achievement when this award-winning three-day event strides out on Friday, June 22. Our iconic mountain range has won ‘Best Walking Destination’ by WalkNI, which recommends the area for its unrivalled network of paths and tracks while the Festival itself has won the ‘Favourite Walking Event’ award twice in a row.


written here before of my love for the delicious cuts— especially the unsurpassable ribeye steaks — from little Dexter cattle. The Finnebrogue herd is lovingly reared near Downpatrick by Nick Lindsay. I cannot think of an apt blues about ribeyes, but there’s a lot of jazz on record by the long-gone US sax-player Dexter Gordon. This reminds me that this year’s OPEN FARM Weekend, founded just six years and 90,000 visitors ago, is June 16 & 17 with a score of agricultural enterprises — including ones now famous through TV programmes like Rare Breed — eager to show families where their food comes from.


June is also a busy month for another burgeoning phenomenon here, namely Foodie Tours promoted by local councils and enterprising gourmets/bloggers Yet again I was in on the start of this tourism sector when I was headhunted to write all the launch materials for FLAVOUR OF TYRONE back in the 90s. Ever- glamorous founder-member of FoT, Lisa S. Williamson of the Valley Hotel, Fivemiletown, is still Queen of the Clogher Valley so far as thousands of Facebookers are concerned!


New for 2018 is the Heartland Food & Drink Tour hosted by Lough Neagh Partnership, departing by coach from Belfast June 2 and 9, sampling Armagh ciders,apple juices, rapeseed oil, chutneys etc,with buffet lunch in an impressive mansion, ending up getting a flavour of Tyrone hospitality at Tomney’s Bar in The Moy ( close to my family’s ancestral seat near former T


TREW & MOY Railway Station, now a mushroom enterprise which is not on the tour…yet!) On the private enterprise side, I like the style of


TOAST THE COAST featuring Guided Food Tours from Whitehead to Cushendun via NI’s Best Bakery in Larne, tapas & gin at Ballygally Castle, home-made specialities at Glenarm Estate and Tea Rooms (yes, the one I raved about in this column), seafood at Carnlough, and a drink or two at Mary McBride’s in Cushendun. I like the following in their brochure: ”Alternatives can be provided instead of alcohol.” It rarely that non-drinkers like me are politely considered along with the likes of diabetics and food- faddists. Details: ToastTheCoastNI.com


My early days savouring those early spuds


I REALLY look forward to COMBER EARLIES FOOD FESTIVAL on June 23; we have not missed one show since these distinctively-flavoured new potatoes gained European Union PGI (Protected Designation of Origin) status in 2012. Other geographical products include Lough Neagh eels, Armagh Bramley apples (What happens to them after Brexit?), Parma ham, Irish Whiskey and Champagne. I grew up in East Belfast with a market gardener/trader father who became a well-known character selling his own-grown flowers and veg - and fruit, if tomatoes qualify - at St George’s Market on Fridays. He was a friend of the proud families - the Orrs, Horners, McKees & Co - who still farm spuds in the crumbly alluvial soil around the north end of Strangford in sight of Scrabo Tower.


On Friday nights around this time of year, Tommy Trew would light my hungry eyes up by bringing home from Market the season’s first bucket of ‘wee marlies’ he had swopped for a big bunch of chrysanths for the farmer’s wife. My mum, Louisa Rea Trew, would boil the early-season spuds - which were more the size of golfballs than marbles - then drained the big pot and let them steam with the lid on for five minutes while she fried the Belfast Lough herrings my da loved to eat with them.


The Comber New Potatoes were heaped in our biggest bowl, slathered in buttercup-toned country butter, with a half-handful of Carrick Salt and eaten whole. I was transported to Heaven with the first ‘marley’. of summer.


The flavour is still impossible for me to describe: earthy…nutty…briney…certainly noticeably - but not totally - different from the everyday boiled spuds of the same ‘early’ varieties we ate later in the year at school dinners and Sunday lunch, such as Home Guard, Accord, Dunluce etc.


Comber Earlies Festival has secured the Michelin chef Jean-Christophe Novelli to run the demos at the Festival on the 23rd; Festival farmers no doubt hope he will use Comber spuds all year round at his Novelli- branded up-market restaurant in the recently-opened AC Marriott Hotel on Belfast’s northern waterfront. Those dining al fresco on the terrace of ‘Novelli at City Quays’ have views across Belfast Harbour waters to The Titanic and Odyssey tourism flagships. J-C designed the French Brasserie-style eaterie at the hotel, but ‘Le grand chef ‘ at the stoves is local man Jim Mulholland, who won Hotel Restaurant of the Year for his former employer, Ballyrobin Lodge, where his food must have impressed J-C Novelli who stayed there in 2017…


While I’m on the subject of Comber and al fresco


eating, let me commend my regular haunt on sunny days, the G


GEORGIAN HOUSE on the Square, where J-C may be washing his hands during the Festival (so give your Chef the day off!). As world president of T


T-POTS (The Preservation DINOSAUR ENCOUNTER at Belfast’s W5 is sure to be one of this summer’s biggest family attractions whatever the weather!


of Tea and Scones) I hereby award the Grand Saucer of Merit for the Scrumptiousness of their Scones, particularly the Cherry, the Cinnamon and the Pineapple & Coconut.


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