Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

For some time I have been fascinated by what exactly the sightseeing tours of Belfast offer their customers. The bus-trips were in the news last week having been subject to attacks in West Belfast, but proving that in some respects all publicity is good publicity, my curiosity was “re-piqued”. And so this weekend my girlfriend and I decided to avail of the services of the main operator and experience their open-topped bus tour. After the initial shock of being charged £11 each we took up our seats in the lower deck of what appeared to be a reclaimed and almost entirely unrefurbished service bus which had had the roof removed. The upper deck was already fully populated and the lower deck’s windows were smeared with seasonal road dirt, thus inhibiting visibility for the delights we were to be shown. As we lurched forwards down High Street, our guide (Michael), clad in a red bomber jacket which gave him the appearance of a colourful nightclub bouncer, wrestled with his microphone, exte...

No obvious example occurs to me where a city other than Belfast presents its least salubrious areas as a tourist attraction. Because violence and crime in this country have long been spuriously politicised, the areas which produce most violence and crime have become those which tourists on their voyeuristic troubles tours wish to see. Political tourism in other countries may mean a visit to the Berlin Wall, or the Reichstag, or indeed the Kremlin. Meanwhile in Belfast political tourism involves a bus-trip up the Falls and the Shankill. And if this is the typw of tourism attraction we encourage visitors to enjoy, why should anyone be surprised when this happens ? If Northern Ireland, and Belfast in particular, spent more time and effort attempting to increase the options for tourists here and selling the positive attractions the province has, we would not need to take tourists up the Falls Road in the first place!

I often advance an unpopular hypothesis that the favourable tourist reviews Belfast receives are largely attributable to a mixture of post conflict goodwill and low expectations. The city is pitifully short of decent visitor attractions when compared to other city break destinations in Britain and Europe. In terms of galleries and museums the place is a dead loss and given this dearth it seems scarcely believable that for the last year the Ulster Museum has been closed and no work has been taking place on its refurbishment. It seems that the next time we can direct a visitor to a decent museum will be in summer 2009! Of course tourists still have the option of wandering about the Cathedral Quarter which despite 10 years in the pipeline as Belfast’s bohemian district remains a largely derelict area of pawn shops and thrift stores, which any cautious traveller would avoid like the plague! Or perhaps they might choose to wander around the eerily deserted City Centre at night trying to f...