Meet the Starks: a Game of Thrones location tour in Northern Ireland
Running around a ruin, dressed in a cloak and swinging a sword is just one of the attractions of a Game of Thrones tour in Northern Ireland, writes Alan Yu. Pictures by Channing Brown.
It's a chilly winter afternoon, and the sky above Strangford Lough is pure blue, dotted with a few fluffy clouds. The still water crisply reflects an island with one tree sticking up in the middle and a village at the far end.
Those assembled stop admiring the view and squint instead at an iPad being held aloft by our guide.
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We're not here for the scenery; this is a tour, so we stop only at places where specific scenes in the HBO television series were shot. We try to figure out where the camera must have stood; where our favourite characters sat; which parts of the landscape were digitally altered to include buildings and extra rocks.
In various locations around Northern Ireland, Arya Stark makes her escape from King's Landing; Catelyn and Robb Stark learn of Ned's beheading; Stannis Baratheon wields a flaming sword; and Theon Greyjoy first meets his sister, Yara. We won't get to see all of the many set locations in the province, but on such a tour, you discover how a popular TV show can affect an area, from faint physical traces on the landscape (HBO was not permitted to make significant alterations) to the locals who have to contend with gaggles of tourists.
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when it was still cold, dark and rainy in Dublin, my wife and I boarded a bus with people we didn't know, including Dorothy, our cheerful iPad bearer.
