"The Gobbins" is the heading to an article in a glossy magazine from the North. An odd name? It might be from the Irish goban tire, a point of land or small headland. It refers, anyway, to a path of some ingenuity blasted out of the basalt rock at the northern mouth of Belfast Lough, and climbing and diving in spectacular fashion around the first bit of coastline on Islandmagee peninsula just around the corner. At present, the article tells us, the only way you can marvel at the rock formation and the thriving bird life is from a fishing boat in the North Channel. "Puffins, kitiwakes, fulmars and razorbills soaring and diving and, come a summer's evening, the manx shearwaters come out", we are told by Anne Purdy in omnibus, a magazine published by the Northern Ireland Information Service, Castle Buildings, Stormont.
The path around the Gobbins was a very remarkable feat of engineering, and the man responsible for creating it was from Wexford's Berkely Dean Wise. He was the chief engineer of the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway which, to a great extent, had turned the nearby seaside town of Whitehead into a holiday resort for the people of Belfast. And a place for a day excursion. So Wise, encouraged by Whitehead's popularity, decided to run a cliff path from the seafront promenade to Blackhead - farther out at the very mouth of Belfast Lough. Then he went for a most adventurous scheme which involved going along the foot of the cliffs beyond that, the Gobbins, so he blasted a path out of the solid basalt, writes Anne Purdy, 35 feet and sometimes 70 feet above the sea. Many large caves had to be bridged and tunnels were cut through the rock "with one actually taking the genteel visitor below sea level." Most famous bridge (perfectly caught in a good photograph) was tubular and brought the path 70 feet out to a huge rock stack, Man O' War, and then linked up with the path again by two more bridges. A bit scary for some people, but a big draw. An architect involved with the British Association for the Advancement of Science said there was "nothing like the Gobbins Path anywhere in the world."
It's not all birds and thrills. There is the story of the murder of Catholics in 1641 - thrown over the cliffs. What have modern historians to say about it? The Ordnance Survey reporters are dubious. Today's news is that money is being sought to rebuild the Gobbins Walk. There was no maintenance during the war. Most of the structures fell into the sea since then. Well worth restoring. Y