Electric Brae

Recently I have been telling guests about a little known place of interest near Tory Bush, if that not an oxymoron.

 This place is an Electric Brae a hill at which Newtons discovery of the Law of Gravity is defied, basically a parked car with it's handbrake off appears to run backwards uphill.  I am uncomfortable with the term Electric Brae;  it comes from  hill in Scotland, near Ayr, where the same phenomena is observed. Brae is a Scottish word for hill not in common usage here and Electric because the effect was initially thought to be an Electric or Magnetic attraction or repulsion from the surrounding hill or in the case of the site near Tory Bush a large reservoir.  Just visualise how two magnets repel each other.

However in lieu of a better term I am stuck with Electric Brae. The location near Tory Bush is at Spelga Dam in the Mournes, if you have an Ordnance Survey Map then the Grid reference is 265 275, and I will atempt to give directions from Tory Bush as follows. Leave Tory Bush by turning right on to the Tullaree Road proceed to re-join the B180, the main road between Bryansford and Hilltown, at the junction turn right onto the B180 heading towards Hilltown and travel about half a mile to take the second left, the Slievenaman Road. Travel about 4 mile up the Slievenaman road climbing all the way, as you travel up you will pass Fofanny Dam on the left and in front of it the new underground water treatment plant which should only be visible by looking backwards when you just past the entrance and you should see the rear doors down below the road.  On the right just oppsite the dam wall you will see the massive land-slip on the slope of Butter Mountain that occurred on the day of the heavy rain in August 08, the same day the under-pass in Belfast flooded.

The road will level out and down to the right you will see Splega Dam and a road that swings down to Hilltown, take this road down past the dam. On your left will be some car-parking spaces and on the right a toilet block, drive past the dam wall and start to decline what is known as the Spelga Hill Climb  an apline like zig-zag road, but don't go far.  Just beyond what must have been a dam-workers house there is a little road into the left driving straight towards the dam itself, and at the end of which is two gates into the grounds infront of the Dam. Park in front of the gates and put your car out of gear and the hand brake off and see what happens. The road has recently been tarmacced so the phenomena should be more apparent, previously you used to get stuck in a pot hole.

Hopefully your car will appear to run back up the slope of this little private road. It can be appreciated why some thought it was a magnetic effect with it being attributed to a magnetic repulsion caused by the large body of water behind the Dam Wall.

Presently I will leave it to you all to come up with an explanation I have my own theory and it involves the use of a spirit level.

Sky Rocket

I was out doing a little bit of shopping today, not Christmas shopping I hasten to add, I was trying to get a particular type of tall thin coniferous tree, to be planted and obscure the support leg of the new Balcony on house 6, the idea being to make the Balcony look like it is floating unsupported. The common name for the tree is Skyrocket which pretty much describes what it looks like, quite imaginative these gardeners, I think it a member of the Cypress Family, on checking I see it is called Juniper Skyrocket, proper name Juniperus Scopulorum and is a member of the Cupressaceae family often commonly called the Cypress family.

Well I did not get my plant, I will have to go to a more specialist Garden Centre.

But having noticed the number of cars from the South of Ireland up here it made me think of the reasons why, I heard on the radio last week that what costs about 1,300 euro in Dublin can be bought for 1,000 Euro in the North.

There are several reasons, the pound has weakened against other currencies last year it was worth 2 dollars now it is only worth 1.5 dollars and it has softened about 15% against the Euro, not more than a month ago the Euro was worth abot 78 pence now it is almost 86 pence.

In addition at the last budget in the South VAT was increased to 21.5% whilst on the same effective date, the 1st of December it was reduced to 15% here. An all Ireland Chamber of Commerce site says that this leads to a 43% difference in the VAT rates either site of the Border, this is a significant difference if say buying higher value electrical items, such as Plasma TVs. Almost 100 pounds on a 52 inch Sony TV for example and that not allowing for the currency differential.

I am not sure if this the topic for a blog but interesting all the same, apparently it has lead to squabbles in Newry, the nearest Border Town, now a city, to Dublin, over issues such as parking spaces and Shopping Trolleys. The Spirit of Christmas lives on, I think thats where I came in.

Fact Finding

I had a big long blog all typed out with links and lost it all as I downloaded software that required my browser to be shut down, my blogging software has an autosave facility that saves every 2 minutes so I don't know what happened on that occasion. I have just seen it auto save twice since restarting.

The content of the blog was basically that I would check out some of the stuff I wrote about in the last blog, firstly the decline in bird populations around Rathlin Island. This I recall from a BBC NI news story so naturally that was the first place I researched but no luck, I spent hours on this and eventually came up with a website http://www.birdlife.org/ , type decline into the search box and click on the article about Irish Birds in Alarming Decline. This kinda substantiates what I recalled, that bird species are declining as there food sources are moving elsewhere.

I also stated that Rathlin was an amazing place, that Robert the Bruce hid out there for a while in a cave before heading back to Scotland to give the English a whooping at Bannockburn. A good website is http://www.goireland.com/antrim/rathlin-island-attractions-id3646.htm and it tells the story of how Robert got inspiration on the Island and came up with the expression "If at first you don't succeed, try try and try again." If it does not go straight to the Rathlin page then just enter Rathlin in the search box at the top of the site and click on first entry that comes up.

Marconi sent the first Radio Signal across water from the Island, you could say radio was invented there.

Mary Black the singer was also from the Island at least her parents were, I think she was born and brought up in Dublin, but I personally prefer her sister Frances, check out http://www.frances-black.net/ and click on the song " Don't be a Stranger" which I propose to be the anthem of this blog.

I was going on to explore the assertion I made in the previous blog that the main issue was the speed of change of Temperature which leads scientists to conclude that this Global Warming is man induced.
There always has been temperature fluctuations, apparently there was a mini-ice age in the middle ages and people could skate on the Thames.
Over the last 150 years since the industrial revolution got into full swing the mean temperature has risen by 0.6 degrees which may not seem a lot but if compared with the change since the last major Ice Age which ended about 8,000 to 10,000 years ago which at it's coldest it was only 5 degrees colder than now. This coldest part of the Ice Age was probably about 15,000 years ago, so in that time the temperature has risen 5 degrees, about .0003 degrees a year, but in the last 150 years now our temperature has risen about 0.6 degrees, that is .oo4 degrees a year.

This may be a simplistic calculation but it appears that the rate of change is ten times faster than before we began belching out all that CO2, and they try to blame the cows, an animal I like to call the Benign Bovine. I will explain the rationale behind that another time.

A quiet time of year

Presently we are experiencing the quietest time of our year, the weeks in the run up to Christmas, it is unusual for us not to have someone staying at Tory Bush most weekends and apart from a last minute booking this evening we would have been entirely empty this weekend.

These customers are a young couple on there third visit this year, and they have asked for Number 6 our loft apartment and indeed asked had the new balcony been fitted which it has. However I can not see anyone sitting out on it over this weekend, it has been what I think is unseasonably cold here over the last week or so. Today the temperature failed to rise above 3 or 4 degrees centigrade. I will put a few chairs on the balcony just in case they decide to brave the elements.

Apart from my strong 'Green' credentials I would say roll on Global Warming.

Actually what alarms me most about global warming is the lost of species of animals and plants. There are lots of predictions out there and I am sure some are scaremongering, but two I note are that up to 30% of land birds species will be extinct by 2100 and the number of Polar Bears will be reduced by two thirds by 2050, just over 40 years from now.

What is causing this is the speed of change, there have been climatic changes before, such as the last Ice Age, but species have had time to react, now the increase in temperature is too rapid. There is television footage of the polar ice-caps literally melting in front of the camera. Europe has it's first Desert in Southern Spain and it is expanding.

I recall that there was a recent news item about the decrease of a certain bird species around Rathlin Island, the Puffin I think, and this was attributed to global warming affecting the supply of it's food, a certain type of fish that itself was in decline or it's migratory path had been altered by the changing temperatures. It did not have to come as far south to reach warmer waters as it used to I think.

But I will do a little research on this and firm up my facts in a later blog.

More About Bryansford

Following my last Blog about the origin of the name of the village of Bryansford I have included two scans from the reference book I use, "Place-Names of Northern Ireland" Vol 3 County Down 111 published by the Dept of Irish Studies, Queens University Belfast.

I have finally got my computer back up and running again, at least what I hope is in a safe and secure environment.



Following an enquiry passed to me from a member of staff of the Mourne Heritage Trust I have just a short blog on the origin of the name of the village of Bryansford which is our neighbouring village about one mile away and is probably the most picturesque village in the Mournes. The enquiry arose from a visitor to the area from Dublin who had the first name Bryan and wondered if there was a connection.



Well there is, Bryansford literally means "Brian's Ford", the ford over the little stream in the middle of the lands own by the son of a local chieftan called Brian McHugh Magennis and this son was also called Brian. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Bryansford&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=47.080837,78.75&ie=UTF8&ll=54.228251,-5.93766&spn=0.008241,0.019226&t=h&z=16&g=Bryansford



The stream runs just outside the village shop in Bryansford, literally under the Phone Box, now in a culvert bridge and virtually unnoticed by the traffic that passes it each day. I will attempt to scan a reference on the origin of the name from my book "The Place Names of Northern Ireland" in a future Blog, but first got to master the technology.

I have been unable to update this blog for a week or so as my previous computer was severely corrupted by a 'Trojan-Horse' which i believe is some kind of virus.

Before I go much further I must refer to a previous blog about the stone workers from Mourne who built the Princess Diana Memorial and I added that they were working on a memorial in Virginia, well I have learnt that they are, or will be, working on the memorial to the British people who lost their lives on 9/11 as a consequence of the attacks on World Trade Centre in New York. Their website is www.smcconnellandsons.com

Another website which is worth a look is www.harryfergusoncelebrationcommittee.com which is about the work by a small committee to create a rememberance garden to propably the greatest Engineer and inventor to come \\from

Always Something new at Tory Bush

In my previous blog i mentioned that I would check out that Clonachullion really did mean the 'Hill of Holly', well I was only partly correct, it means Meadow of Holly, although an alternative interpretation may suggest that the second part of the word i.e. '...chullion' could come from an Irish source meaning steep unbroken slope, but the reference book I use 'Place-Names of Northern Ireland, vol 3 County Down III, The Mournes ' suggests that when the first part 'cluain' is used, and that definitely means meadow, it makes more sense to conclude that it is Meadow of Holly, rather than 'meadow of the steep slope' which is a bit of a contradiction in terms, one imagines meadows to be large tracts of flat lush land.



Ironically the truth is that Clonachullion hill is rather a steep hill as can be seen from the photo in the previous blog. One interesting feature on this hill and which is visible from Tory bush Cottages are a number of parallel ridges in one of the fields running up the hill. It is my view that these are 'Lazy Beds' which were the technique for growing potatoes in this area prior to horse ploughing, and these ridges are still visible as the farming family that created them either died or emigrated as a consequence of the potato famine which lasted from 1845 to 1849. A fuller explanation is given on the cottages website http://www.torybush.com/ and click the Genealogy button . It has been estimated by scholars that the population of Ireland declined by between 20 and 25% as a consequence of the famine, either through death or emigration.

It has to be said that the landlords in Ulster, the northern nine counties of Ireland were a lot more caring about their tenants than in other parts of Ireland and offered relief by means of food in return for work. Many of the long rambling walls around the Estates and Demesnes of these landlords were built at that time.

Every day at Tory Bush something new or different seems to happen, to-day at short notice we had a group of walkers from Dublin come down from the mountains just to shower and change before travelling back to Dublin by coach. We have never had this type of usage before, and I only got the phone-call last night.

Equally on Thursday night I got a call from a youth group in Lisburn that they had been let down by a bicycle hire company and could we provide 13 bicycles for a group of young people aged 13 to 15 on Sat morning at 10.00. Thankfully we were able to help, as in partnership with my son Ronan, we operate a bicycle hire business on the same site as Tory Bush, it did mean a bit of a last minute flurry as though we have quite a few bikes not all are sitting ready to go out on hire, esp. at this time of year and in particular the smaller sizes required by this young group. Ronan was at work all day Friday so it meant we brought the bikes to be used into the large meeting room at Tory Bush, having covered the floor, and Ronan worked on them to about 10.30 pm.

We like the bikes to go out in good order and the leader did comment on how well the bikes performed and in particular the gear changing, which is a particularly difficult thing to get right.

For some reason this month I have lots of meetings and most business related, perhaps the organisers recognise that Nov. is a quiet month in our type of work and a good time to hold meetings. I don't think of meetings as work but I guess they are an essential part of operating my business, I will report back on some of them in future blogs.

Blog with a photo

As this is our second blog I am going to try and import a photograph from Tory Bush Cottages.

Obviously I have succeeded in importing the photo and whilst not showing the cottages themselves it is still of interest, next time I will preview the photos and select one that shows the cottages in their rural setting.

The photograph was taken by one of our guests in May 2008 and is a view from the bedroom window of apartment 6 looking out over the garden towards Slieve Bearnagh, the mountain with the Volcano type crater to the left of centre in distance. ( it is not a extinct volcano, the Mournes were not volcanic but a magma intrusion, where molten rock swells up under the existing rock surface a bit like a blister under skin) through time the existing rocks have wore away to expose the Mourne Granite.)

The Granite is a very durable rock and has been used to form the cobbles of numerous English Towns, particularly in Liverpool and Lancashire, perhaps the cobbles of Coronation Street are Mourne Granite. The Plinth of the Albert Memorial in London is made of Mourne Granite.

The Diana Memorial in Hyde Park London whilst made of Cornish Granite has a connection with Mourne in that the firm of Stone Masons who built the memorial are from Mourne, McConnell and Sons of Kilkeel cut the memorial from 545 pieces of Cornish granite.

Now there is little Granite extraction in Mourne and so McConnell's are working with stone from all parts of the world with an expertise acquired whilst working Mourne Granite and past down through generations of the one family. Presently they are working with Thassos Marble from northern Greece on a memorial for Richmond Virginia USA. This memorial coincidentally is to replace a previous Marble memorial that has virtually disintegrated as a consequence of atmospheric pollution.

Back to the photo, the Mountain in the centre of the skyline is Slieve Meelmore and the hill in front of that is Clonachullion, which I believe means hill of the Holly Trees but I will check that out for the next blog.

In the photo of the grounds of Tory Bush there are three things to note, the black Bee hive shaped structure in the bottom right hand corner is a compost maker in which we mix grass cuttings and old cardboard boxes, on their own neither compost well but make ideal compost if mixed. During the summer we generate amazing amounts of grass cuttings at Tory Bush so will have to develop a larger scale means of composting it. We tried adding food waste to the compost makers at Tory Bush but this just attracted rodents so we are looking out for a system specifically for food waste, possibly a wormery.

In front of the compost maker in the grass there is a silver manhole cover and this is the lid to one of the two large underground rainwater storage tanks that collect the rain from a number of the buildings at the cottages and is used to supply the Washing Machines for the laundry at Tory Bush. From this it can be gathered that we have strong enviromental principles at Tory Bush but more of that in future blogs.

The final thing to note in the photo and perhaps a little mundane is that the garden contains 3 clothes lines, well now it doesn't, it just has one. Originally the grounds at the cottages were quite open with little defined boundaries, but we recognised that as a weakness, people seemed to prefer there own space so over time we built walls, planted hedges, put on gates etc., to such an extent that people were hesitant to enter this garden to use the clothes lines. We have had to give each house it's own line. The initial thinking was that we did not want clothes lines spoiling the overall look of the place so they were placed out of view in this garden, but the same cause that gave rise to the requirement for individual clothes lines also provided the solution. The hedge and tree planting we used to give individual house privacy also provided secluded corners were the individual clothes lines could be located.

So now from the roadside critical view of the cottages the clothes lines are quite obscured.

Hope that last bit not boring, but it typifies a lot of the thinking we put into our actions at the cottages.

Today has been eventful, apart from Barack Obama becoming the 44th President of America this is the first day of the Tory Bush Blog.

Blogging has been recommended by our web-site designer Andrew Kane of Ardnet as a good means of letting people know about the every day events at Tory Bush. These 'people' could be past guests, prospective guests or people who just come across the blog as a consequence of a 'Google', or similar, search.

In case you are one of the latter I should explain that Tory Bush are a group of self-catering holiday cottages located in one of the most scenic parts of Northern Ireland, over looking the Mourne Mountains, there is more info on our website www.torybush.com .

The Mourne Mountains are a small range of Mountains no more than 12 miles long with the highest peak Slieve Donard only 849 metres high, about 2785 feet, and made world famous by the song 'The Mountains of Mourne' written by Irish song-writer Percy French. This song is still bing recorded by singers today and one of the most famous versions was by Don Mclean (of American Pie fame) in 1974. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mountains_of_Mourne

A good site to learn more about this area is www.mournelive.com
I hope you have enjoyed this first blog

David