The green green grass

If money were no object my next endeavour would be to visit all 50 of the world’s 'top views', as outlined in this morning’s Metro.

So far I’ve seen two – erm, London from the Thames, and the Antrim Coast Road, which is about 20 miles from where I grew up! It’s also been named as the second best stretch of road in the world after the highway from LA to San Francisco, so it’s not in bad company. I make that strike 3 for my glorious homeland, after the exploits of the footie and rugby teams in recent weeks.

Still it took a trip half way around the world to New Zealand to make me appreciate it. Growing up it was associated with boring Sunday trips in the car, stopping for a slider in Cushendall. 2 hour journeys that take a lifetime at that age, wishing I was back at home playing football. As the years passed, my friends and I avoided it all together, choosing instead to head straight up Frosses Road to the twinkling lights, cheap booze and caravan living of Portrush, and Kellys nightclub. We did go to the beach occasionally, but that was generally to get pissed, most (un)memorably on my last day of school, when an afternoon spent drinking at our barbeque resulted in me passing out for the entire night in Kellys’ toilet. Thankfully I came to just as the last people were getting ejected and they were turning the lights out. Kind of sums the place up that I was left to sleep in a toilet cubicle for 5 hours.

On my return from my brief globe-trotting adventures, I appreciated proximity to beach and stunning scenery that much more, I think in part inspired by the number of Wellingtonians I knew who had never even been to the South Island of New Zealand. (I didn’t make it either but that’s another story.) Most weekends would see my then-girlfriend and me driving up to the beach, getting lost in the forest, accidentally going for a drink in “quaint” pubs that turned out to be, erm, “Republican friendly” (once on the day that Rangers had beaten Celtic in an Old Firm game - my girlfriend asked what the score was and was asked if she wanted to be thrown in the sea; I just sat quietly, paranoid they could read “hun” across my forehead). It were luvverly. And probably the reason I survived a year of living at home without going stir crazy. Well, that and the aforementioned young lady, of course.