Four Winds - City Hall

Route – 7

Four Winds to City Centre

Just two of us today; so more history chat and less fast running.

Brian and I travelled up into the Castlereagh Hills and started with a lap of the roads around Knockbracken golf course.  Soon we left the public highway and were on the delightful path down towards Lisnabreeny – in a few years this route will be part of the new Connswater Greenway, stretching all the way to Victoria Park.

We went through a tunnel under Manse Road and entered Cregagh Glen.  Another of Belfast’s hidden gems and great place to run, especially if you like going downhill.

This memorial on the Cregagh Rd commemorates William McFadzean who was awarded a VC at the Somme.  He apparently threw himself on top of a pile of exploding grenades to save his colleagues.

Next stop was 16 Burren Way, the former home of George Best.  Brian, a lifelong Man City fan, declined to be in this photograph.

We managed to get into Ravenhill undetected but decided against a lap of the pitch.   I only been there once for a match and got evicted, not for hooliganism but because of safety concerns about high winds toppling the old temporary grandstand.  My friend Paul and I lived to tell the tale. 

Then it was a run through Ormeau golf course – did you know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once played there?

Going down the Ormeau Road, we stopped at the site of the old North cricket ground.  I’m trying to research an early international match played there, in which the England team included the oddly named Julius Caesar and R Daft.

Next door is the old Belfast Gas Works.  My father, as a young boy, was once brought there to walk over beds of smoking coke to cure his whooping cough – it worked!

Brian and I finished with coffee at the busy Cafe Avanzo, also surrounded by fumes, this time from the new fad of electronic cigarettes.