The skies were smiling at the around 100 people who set off from Ballymena Protestant Hall yesterday on the fifth leg of the Long March, the 117-mile walk from Derry to Portadown, Co Armagh. Yesterday's leg, which ended at around 4 p.m. in Antrim town, brought marchers another 11 miles closer to their final destination of Portadown, where they are planning to arrive on Saturday, the eve of the banned Drumcree parade.
The Parades Commission's decision to ban the Orange Order from walking down Garvaghy Road and its ruling not to allow the Long March through the street in Lurgan where the office of human rights lawyer Ms Rosemary Nelson, killed by loyalist paramilitaries, is located, were the main talking points.
Mr Jonathan Bell, a dissident Ulster Unionist councillor and one of the march organisers, described the Parades Commission as the "No parades commission".
He deplored its decision.
Mrs Anna Dixon, whose husband Jim was seriously injured in the Enniskillen bomb 12 years ago, said she was "heartbroken" by the decision.
Mrs Dixon, who will travel to France today to attend a Battle of the Somme commemoration, said she felt "yet again betrayed by the British government", which had offered little support to her husband after he sustained his injuries.
Mr Dixon, who walks with the aid of a walking stick, accompanied his wife on yesterday's stretch.
Mr Peter Gibson, whose father John was killed by republican paramilitaries in 1993, expressed his disgust at the Parades Commission's ruling: "We are always told we have to swallow the bitter pill. How come it only seems bitter on our side? When will this one-way traffic ever stop?" Mr Gibson said it was a scandal the man convicted of killing his father, a chief executive of Henry Brothers, a construction firm carrying out work for the security forces, would be released next year.
"That man's family lives about five miles from my house. I'd say there is a great likelihood I will bump into him sooner or later."
So far, the march has remained trouble-free, a fact welcomed by all participants with the exception of a German TV crew, who said they would not have come had they known it would be "such a peaceful affair". Mr Fraser Agnew, a United Unionist Party Assembly member, said he was relieved: "We want nothing to do with individuals and organisations who want to hijack the Long March for their own sinister ends."
By the time the marchers arrived in Antrim the skies had clouded over but participants were in good spirits, not least thanks to the generous supplies of sandwiches, buns and soft drinks which shops along the way had provided.
The Rev John Armstrong, a Free Presbyterian minister, said: "Unfortunately it is only the terrorists who get listened to these days, while the innocent victims have been forgotten."