Northern Ireland, Nov 2007

At George Best airport in Belfast, I cleverly bypassed the bag-in-the-hold queues by forgoing toiletries. A sprint around the chemist replenished my needs. In retrospect, I should have paid greater concentration in the dental section. What appeared to be some kind of Irish branded toothpaste turned out to be denture cream. I found out the hard way, scraping the gluey gunk from the roof of my mouth. The memory still makes me gag.

Architecturally, Belfast is defensive looking. Even the new boutique shops and 'cathedral quarter' redesignation can't hide the recent history and where other cities would have smothered facades with glass, Belfast is more hesitant. Whether this is the subconscious working, I don't know. The black taxi tour of 'The Troubles' was grimly fascinating. On the Protestant Shankill Road, blue skies shone on the Red Hand of Ulster mural and a powerful painted image of a lone UFF soldier trained his rifle as I crept past.

On the other side of the dividing line, the rain came down on Bobby Sands and the wall of empathising murals ranging from Palestine to the Basque Country. Even the weather seemed split by the sectarian divide.

Samuel Johnson once said the Giant's Causeway was "worth seeing, yes, but not worth going to see." This was a time before the Antrim Coast Road had been blasted through the rock. The modern route from Belfast is dramatic, the sea spraying the road, and Scotland visible on the horizon. The modern pleasure lies in the journey too.

At the Causeway, unexpected November sunshine played across the stone polygons and, squinting, I thought of a tumbled Inca wall. I preferred the myth to the science, the clever giant over the cooling lava.

I went to Derry because that's where the Undertones were from and therefore it couldn't be bad. I was surprised at the clarity of the murals in Catholic Bogside. No ambiguity here. Multi-coloured provocation, pushed right against the city walls, "You are now entering Free Derry" says one, another depicts a jailcell and all the people represented, were dead.