Jonny McCambridge: Remembering the Dark Hedges before Westeros

The tourist had a problem and was urgently seeking help. The cruise ship which had brought her to Northern Ireland had docked for a few hours before it was scheduled to sail away again. In the small window that was available the woman was loudly telling a waiter that she HAD to see the Dark Hedges.

The waiter who she was pleading with was Eastern European and was struggling to understand, so I decided to step in. I told the woman that there was no train which went where she wanted to go and that finding buses which suited her tight schedule might be tricky. After she firmly told me that money was NO object I suggested that she take a taxi. I told her how long the journey would take and gave her the numbers of a couple of taxi firms before she sped off.

Over the years I’ve occasionally wondered if the tourist made it to north Antrim and, if so, did she make it back in time to catch her cruise ship before it departed. I’ve also wondered, considering her clear desperation, if she thought the knobbly old trees were worth all the fuss when she got there.

I suppose the story has stayed with me so keenly because of the way it represented two disparate cultures brought together in one place. A woman from the other side of the Atlantic, presumably intoxicated by the romantic landscapes of Game of Thrones (a programme I admit that I’ve never watched) encountering me, a country boy who grew up just up the road from the Dark Hedges. To her, the trees represented Westeros. To me, they represent Stranocum.

Just in case anyone is not familiar, the Dark Hedges are two rows of ancient grey-green beech trees on either side of a thin road deep in the remote north Antrim countryside. They slope towards each other, as if reaching out for comfort. At the tops the thin branches cross like spindly fingers locked together, forming an arch which blocks out the sunlight, creating something almost sinister and, at its best, disturbingly beautiful.

As I said, I was reared on the Ballinlea Road, just a few miles from the trees. When I was a child, long before the camera crews arrived, there were few visitors and, I would imagine, it would have been a day’s work to find anyone who was not from the immediate area who knew about the trees. I was only vaguely aware of their existence myself in my early years and I was a young adult before I truly appreciated their eerie grey elegance.

While north Antrim was full of tourist attractions, the Dark Hedges back then did not register as one. There was no visitors’ centre, no car park, not even a road sign. In my 20s, living in Belfast, I would sometimes bring friends to the site, enjoying introducing them to a natural wonder that I knew they would be unaware of, but would always remember.

And there is an even deeper familial link. My great great aunt Rosetta once ran a tiny shop at the end of the Bregagh Road, just yards from the famous trees.

If this seems like a very remote location for a shop then consider that in the past, long before supermarkets, these little stores were dotted all over the country, helping to feed communities. The shop sold sweets, cigarettes and basic foods. It probably opened sometime in the 1930s and was in business for decades.

The shop was finally forced to close in 1971, three years before I was born, because aunt Rosetta, then in her 90s, couldn’t cope with the disruption caused by the introduction of decimal currency. I would imagine that there are only a select few left who remember visiting the shop, although I’m told that older hands used to refer to the area as ‘McCambridge Corner’.

All of this has been in my mind recently because I spent my summer holiday in north Antrim this year, coronavirus having laid waste to plans for more ambitious travel. During the trip we stopped briefly at the Dark Hedges. Despite my history with the location I am no longer a regular visitor. This is partly because now I live further away and have a busy life, but also partly because I’m not so keen on what I see these days.

The trees themselves remain dramatic and daunting. But now when I look, I am left with the impression that the effect is not as stirring as it once was.

For a start, some trees have fallen, finally defeated by years of being battered by strong winds. Of those still standing a number seem to have lost major branches, with ragged stumps protruding like broken teeth. The bark of some of the trees is now covered by an ugly patchwork of messages which have been carved deep into the trunks like graffiti. Cars continue to regularly travel up and down the Bregagh Road, despite the sign which supposedly forbids them from doing so. I have witnessed over-excited visitors climbing on the trees.

Perhaps some of this is to be expected. The trees are old, and like all living things, they will eventually die. Natural conditions have taken a heavy toll. But man-made forces are also contributing to the deterioration. The rural infrastructure and natural landscape are not coping with the massive recent influx of tourists and cars. I strongly suspect that the state of the trees has altered more in the past decade than in the previous two centuries. I am left wondering for how much longer there will be enough left of the Dark Hedges to justify a visit.

Before I left I stopped briefly at the spot where aunt Rosetta used to have her shop and sold sweets and cigarettes for more than half a century. It is just a mound of grass and weeds now, with no trace left of the little stone building which was once there. I thought about how quickly, in the name of progress, what once seemed permanent can be consigned to history.

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