Cycling through Duncrue Industrial Estate, Of course I got lost, but I found a few ancient dry docks and hundred-and-fifty-year-old shipping warehouses that have been converted to offices.
It's easy to forget that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Belfast was a major player in the Industrial Revolution, home to the world's biggest shipbuilders (Harland & Wolff employed 35,000 people), the world's largest rope works, and was the largest linen producing centre in the world. Shorts was the first aircraft manufacturing company in the world. Sirocco Works (once the largest engineering plant in the world) was the place where Air Conditioning was first developed in its current form, and the Royal Victoria Hospital was the first building in the world to have air conditioning installed.
Red & yellow brick, white granite, and green copper - Belfast is actually quite interesting. I wonder if there's a self-guided city cycle tour. Maybe I could create one.
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