Surfing on the north coast of Ireland, I learned an important life lesson

Ricky Martin told me to trust him as he shoved me onto a surfboard and told me I wasn’t going to drown.

I can’t swim. I’m pushing 30 and I don’t even know how to float, something not helped by watching Titanic when I was four.

But as Ricky, my 45-year-old surf instructor for the day reminded me, the ocean we are standing in on the coast of Northern Ireland was barely above my knees. He spotted a promising wave and told me to get ready to pop up, moving from a push-up into a crouched stance, on my foam board.

I paddled and up I went, fighting every instinct to look down at the sea below.

My first ride lasted only a few seconds, but for a moment, I didn’t have time to second-guess myself or overthink. You do it, or you don’t. And I did it.

Unlike me, Ricky always pictured himself as a surfer.

‘When I was younger, there was no such thing as surf schools, let alone lifeguards on the beach,’ he tells me at his school on the West Strand. ‘My parents said I had to be a good swimmer and I could start when I was 14.’

‘I got a surfboard for Christmas. I turned 14 in January, it was the most stoked I’ve ever been, and that was it. I’ve lived in the sea ever since.’

That’s why he created the surf school Alive Adventures, to help people experience the freeing thrill of riding a wave. As an urban beach, the Portrush waves are smaller and more manageable to learn on.

‘Getting in the water is good for your mental and physical health,’ Martin says. ‘I think everyone should do it.’

There are many people like Ricky in Northern Ireland, keen to show that the country isn’t just Game of Thrones shoot locations, pints and rain.

Rather, it’s a place away from mounting emails and procrastination where you can finally say, you know what, why not?

This was my mantra when I boarded a flight to Belfast from London Gatwick on a Wednesday in May: give it a shot, no matter how anxious I was, something my therapist has long begged me to do.

That, and tell every Irish person I meet that I’m a ‘quarter Irish’. After delivering said line to a taxi driver, I stepped out in front of Room2 Belfast, my home for the night ahead of my tour of the country’s northeast coast.

‘You’re just waiting for a mermaid to pop out’

The next morning, I checked out to hike around Glenariff Forest Park, in the North Antrim Hills, about an hour’s drive from the capital.

Woods, rivers and walking trails fringed with garlic and strawberries make up the 1,200-hectare area, seven times the size of Hyde Park.

‘It looks like something out of a movie,’  Victoria Canavan, our guide from Tourism NI, tells us in front of Ess-Na-Crub Waterfall. ‘You’re just waiting for a mermaid to pop out.’

Victoria says leaving the office behind to feel the grass beneath her feet is common in Northern Ireland, easy to do in a country where greenery is as common as existential crises are these days.

Horses are another way to get around. But my steed, Ranger, wasn’t going anywhere. Not when there was food next to him.

Ranger, one of 150 horses at Shean’s Horse Farm in Ballymoney, was holding back our group by constantly nibbling on the grass. To be fair, if food were around me all the time, I’d do the same.

Melissa McCollan, 43, who’s worked at Shean’s for six years, says people come from all over the world to see Northern Ireland on horseback.

’You won’t get any experience in the world, like look at it,’ she says, gesturing at the hillside as Ranger, of course, was eating. ‘Even in the rain, it looks beautiful.

’Some people come for their background and heritage because everyone’s got a bit of Irish in them. We’re all so amazing that yous’ are all descended from us.’

It turns out that horse riding, which famously consists of sitting, is one hell of a workout. Exhausted, we drove 20 minutes to the Marine Hotel in Ballycastle to rest.

Many tourists flock to the port town to see the most mythical of actual creatures: puffins. Seven miles off the shore is Rathlin Island, where puffins, seals and dolphins dive in sun-silvered waters while lighthouses keep watch.

Charles Stewart, 55, and Dawn Hines, ‘under 40’, are taking me for a boat tour of the island on Friday. The Kinatra Boat Tours founders are joined by patient bird-watchers hoping to spot the island’s predatory birds.

’The basking sharks always bring a smile to people’s faces,’ says Charles. ‘We once saw a minke whale, it was amazing.’

Dawn, a marine biologist, adds: ‘Nature is vital to us and we love it, Rathlin is ever-changing.’

Golf, greenery and rain — welcome to Northern Ireland

The day then became a lot more Irish. It started bucketing down as we drove to the setting of this year’s Open, Royal Portrush Golf Club. Pro Gary McNeil taught me how to swing a golf club without sending the ball into the car park.

The sea was steel-grey the next morning as I left the hotel for the Giant’s Causeway, said to have been formed by the trampling of the mythical, 54-foot-tall giant Benandonner.

Stories are everywhere in Northern Ireland, explains James Neil, 38, a visitor experience officer with the National Trust.

’Generations of people have told these stories for a very long time and it gives us a sense of place,’ he says, adding that his favourite legend is one of a nagging grandmother turned to stone by Benandonner. ‘Myths are important – they connect us to our past.’

Portrush was the final leg of my coastal tour, where we had a booking that day at the four-star Elephant Rock Hotel.

One surf lesson later, we spent the evening eating fish and chips and arancini at the restaurant, Shanty Portrush, looking out at the dragon-back rocks and rain-whipped seas.

A pub rammed with neon Guinness signs – where Victoria had her first date with her partner – was our final spot of the tour. A true Irish send-off.

Come Sunday morning, I got ready for my flight. Killing time at the airport, I rummage in my suitcase: A puffin hat, a golf ball and swim trunks still smelling of seawater.

That’s when something Ricky had said came back to me. One of my goals in therapy is, pretty simply, to do karaoke. The thought of being up on a stage, screeching Love Shack by the B-52s, is terrifying.

Ricky knows everyone has fears that stop them from doing small things, which is why he set up an activity provider in a town of only 6,000.

So, if I can surf or go horse riding, why can’t I do other things like sing in front of people?

‘We bring people from around the world and help them with their mental health,’ Ricky said, ‘and when I see them blossom, I just love it.’

If they can blossom, I think to myself as I board, then I can, too.

Josh Milton was a guest of Tourism Ireland.

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