Winter is Coming--Better Get Your Geek On

By Kerry

For those of you not in the know, much of the HBO show "Game of Thrones" is filmed in Northern Ireland, at Titanic Studios (located adjacent to Harland and Wolff shipyard, where Titanic was built and launched).  The rest is either in Iceland (bits of Winterfell and the North) or Croatia (King's Landing).

Of course, as we're big fans both of the books and the TV series, a visit to some of the famous scenes in the film was too enticing to pass up.  So when we drove up the M1 from our house for a weekend in the North, we began with a hike in the Tollymore Forest, where Jon Snow and his siblings discovered direwolf pups...

Then, we spent the afternoon at Castle Ward, also known as Winterfell Castle!  I spent an hour looking for the courtyard where most of the filming was done, but could only find one tower.  Apparently, (as you can see from the superimposed photo below) there is only one actual tower in the courtyard.  The second (and a number of turrets and parapets) were magically added by the wizards in post production.  No wonder they were hard to find!

The Ward house probably deserves its own article, as full of life and history as it was.  I would point out a few things quickly, however.  First, in the 1600s the lord and lady could not agree on the style of home they wanted to build.  So like bickering siblings, they drew a line down the middle and he got his half built in Classic style, while her half (lengthwise) was architecturally and decoratively Gothic.  No, seriously, there's a hallway down the center of the house and all rooms on the left are done in one architectural style, all rooms to the right in another...with--I kid you not--bookshelves that open into secret passages between and a secret room where the lord could disappear from his lady wife for a brief respite.  

One of their descendents was quite a fan of decorating with taxidermy (I'll let you investigate that particular Victorian social phenomenon on your own time...)

Finally, I wanted to point out the outstanding plaster work done by Irish craftsmen back in the day.  For one thing, the Lady Ward wanted a boudoir in the Gothic style, and the builders obliged with the below bit of magnificence (the experience of standing in the room has been described as a bit like being beneath a giant cow).

However, final decorations of the house were late (and overbudget)...  So at last the master admonished the plasterers and told them they had 48 hours to finish, or he wouldn't be paying them for any of their work.  Being naturally creative by trade and disposition, and true Irishmen to boot, they obliged the lord and finished an impossible job on time.  Only in the 1950s was it finally discovered that some of their later, hurried plastering was, well, a bit more realistic than the lord had intended.  You see, the only way they could figure out to get the job done by the deadline was to dip real objects in plaster and nail them to the wall.  Hence, an impossibly lifelike violin (among other inspirations).

After a good night's sleep, we decided to continue along the Game of Thrones trail, as we sailed west to Pyke and the Iron Islands.

Cakebreads' visit to Ballintoy Harbour

Looked a bit different with Hollywood in town!

Then, off down the Kingsroad (apparently Arya, Hot Pie, and Gendry were really being carted off toward the Bushmills Distillery, where is where we went, too!)

 Finally, those of you who are fans may vividly recall a discovery of white walkers north of the Wall...just add artificial snow!