For those of you unfamiliar with the geography of Ireland, County Down is one of the six counties that make up Northern Ireland, otherwise known as Ulster. Bangor, a seaside resort alongside Belfast Lough, is located in County Down; the Mountains of Mourne, which look onto the Irish Sea, can be found in County Down as well.
My mother, who was raised by her grandmother, her aunt, and her father in a row house in Belfast, used to spend her summers in Bangor where she stayed with another aunt and her three cousins. It was a place that she always spoke fondly of when I was growing up. In the late 1960's, during the two years my father was stationed in Scotland, I spent a month each summer in Bangor. We rented a lovely bungalow overlooking Belfast Lough that first summer; the second house we rented wasn't as nice and was located among a lot of houses with no view to speak of.
After my father retired from the Navy, he and my mother first lived in England to be close to my grandfather, who was living in Cambridge. After my grandfather died, my folks moved to Northern Ireland and bought the same house in Bangor that my mother had imagined owning when she was a girl. That's where they remained until they both died. Nearly all of my Irish relatives are dead now. My relatives remaining in Northern Ireland are only distantly related--second cousins, to be exact.
Some of my memories are walking along the pathway overlooking the lough when going from Bangor West to the shops in Bangor, riding the ferry across Strangford Lough when traveling to the Mountains of Mourne with my wife and my folks, and proposing to my wife in a glen in Crawfordsburn Country Park.
At some point, my wife and I hope to visit Bangor, among other places in Ireland. It will give me a chance to see where my folks are buried, not having been able to travel to Ireland when they were dying and when they were laid to rest.
