Walking the Cassie cattle trail: 5. The final stretch - to Dalway's Bawn

Leaving  Poag's Hill on the last section of my walk with Ray Cowan along the old cattle trail from the Commons to Dalway's Bawn, the 'Cassie' develops a different feel. The final stretch is more wooded as we come near to the edge of the Dalway's Bawn home farm, but at the start, after Poag's Hill, the Cassie becomes obviously well-used - with some new houses behind the occasional 'modern' garden hedge!

 

Thinking we were about to arrive at the end of the Cassie, I was soon disabused of that idea, as Ray explained that these houses were still only accessible from the old lane way - and that the 'road junction' ahead was nothing other than a side lane leading to the old Caldwell and Hay farms among others, including the original Andrew Jackson Homestead (no longer accessible).

Soon we leave this strange,  cluster of side lanes and drives to dispersed isolated houses, and - straight ahead in the above photo - the Cassie reverts to its country lane character.

As we walk down this stretch of the Cassie, it once again feels like a lost, ancient world.

On the left, great views appear of the Bella hill countryside, with another last glimpse of the Irish Sea.

 

The next photographs take us down through a beautiful, wooded stretch signalling that we are now not only down into the 'lowlands' but also on the edge of the wooded margins of the Dalway and Dobbs landscaped demesnes.

   

 

At the last bend in the lane, a view to the right confirms that we have reached the demesnes of Dalway's Bawn (below the middle horizon) and Castle Dobb's (middle horizon).

And so down the final 100 yards or so of the Cassie down to Dalway's Bawn Road.

 

Out on the road, a last look back up the Cassie

 

- before the photographic evidence that Ray and I have indeed reached the road outside Dalway's Bawn.

Thanks again Ray for the conducted tour. We have reached the end of the Cassie, but not the end of the story! 

An uncanny reunion at Bellahill - to walk the 'Cassie' cattle trail to Dalway's Bawn.

Saturday 17 September 2011 was a big day for these 'East of Eden' chronicles (and for me), as I met up with Ray Cowan after almost 60 years at his childhood home farm in Bellahill - for my long-awaited exploration of the last unaltered stretch of the old cattle drove road from the Commons to Dalway's Bawn.

Ray now lives near Dublin with his wife Helen (uncanny again, as my own wife is called Helen too). We recently re-established contact after our early years at Eden Primary School in the 1950s, when he stumbled on this blog and an old photo taken at his 7th birthday party at his farm in Bellahill.


The detail shows Ray and myself in the middle - Ray sporting his birthday present of a toy gun.








I had posted this old photo in July 2010 in 'An uncanny gathering at Bellahill farm, near Dalway's Bawn, in 1953' and since then we have been in frequent email and telephone contact.

But our reunion had, of course, to be back at his scene of this 'uncanny gathering' - now his brother's farm, and a walk together down the 'Cassie' (the local name given to the old cattle drove track from Beltoy to Dalway's Bawn).

Both these farm photographs show something I didn't know in 1953 - that the trees behind the farm house mark the line of the old cattle drove road from Beltoy to Dalway's Bawn.

The following map shows the line of the 'Cassie' (Ulster-Scots for 'causeway') in blue, and the present Cowan farm is marked on this map as belonging to John Davison in 1860. As followers of this blog may recall, John Davison bought Dalway's Bawn at the end of the 19th century when Marriott Dalway emigrated to Australia, and the Cowans moved to this farm about the same time - from the one immediately to the north, marked 'John Cowan, 1860'.


The walk with Ray down the Cassie was a walk 'down memory lane' in more ways than one, and as there is too much to report in one posting, the next few will be photo-journeys and commentary on this 2-mile dander. It started where the Cassie crosses the Beltoy Road, behind the Cowan farm (to the right in this photo). Another previous post (29 September 2010) had covered the journey I made with my wife from Lough Mourne to the Beltoy Road: 'Along the Cattle Trail - In sight of Scotland'.





Well, just to prove we did finish it, here is Ray at the bottom end of the Cassie, where it comes onto the Dalway's Bawn. It was a great and memorable day - full of nostalgia and new information gleaned from Ray's encyclopaedic knowledge of every farm and field along the way.













To be continued ....