The Land that Time Forgot

When I was a little girl, I had three older brothers who were big and bold and braver than me - and one of them came back, one day, with the story of a secret glen in Carrickfergus, that he and his friends had fallen into. They'd ridden the flume at the side of the reservoir and came out in the glen.

It had old walkways and a waterfall, and had been locked away for years. It was like the 'land that time forgot', I was told and how I wanted to go there. I tried, not quite sure where it was, to find it a few times but never managed to. I found old pictures of it - it was a tourist attraction once, designed by the Waterboard for people visiting Carrickfergus in Victorian times.

And then, one summer, a local photographer - Gary McCabe - posted up pictures of the glen, and it turned out the gate into it was open! I went, with the family, and we climbed down into the Glen. I didn't make it all the way - it was pretty steep in places, and I'm not thirteen anymore, but I went a good way in. Long enough to have finally made it to the Land that Time Forgot. And do you know what? Is was just as magical as my brother described, all those years ago.

(Photo credit Gary McCabe)