Keep Newcastle Weird

A couple months ago I wrote a post about Austin, Texas, and its self-promoted reputation for weirdness. I like Austin and I like its weird qualities. But I think I’d like it more if it didn’t make such a promotion about its weirdness, if it didn’t document its oddness so much. I wish Austin would return to letting all its pockets of local strangeness come as a stumble-upon surprise—kind of like the Olive Bizarre café in the Northern Irish seaside town of Newcastle in County Down.

Newcastle, County Down, Ireland

The Olive Bizarre cafe

 

Me with Lisa, the friend who would order me to go to the bathroom...

Newcastle is the next-door neighbor of Castlewellan, the country town where I spent a summer working in a café and conference center many years ago. If Castlewellan can be described as small and rather sleepy, a definite if also charming farm and tractor town, a jeans and trainers town, Newcastle is bigger and much more bustling, a holiday town, a promenade town, a town you dress up for. Castlewellan is landlocked, Newcastle is sea-struck. Its long and curved strand is flanked by the ultra-posh Sliabh Donard Hotel at one end and the mighty Mourne mountain of Donard itself at the other.

Slieve Donard Hotel on the seafront

Mourne Mountains from Newcastle promenade

Off in the distance from the strand is the Isle of Man and Scotland. You can see the shadowy humps of them on a clear day from the beach, and if you don’t want to get your feet sandy, you can view it from the sparkling new promenade instead. The new promenade is filled with pretty artistic touches like the orb, a big mirrored ball that makes a girl like me from Chicago—where the much larger but otherwise remarkably similar Cloud Gate sculpture, better known as The Bean, resides—feel as if she’s on more familiar ground.

Beach at Newcastle

Mirrored ball sculpture on Newcastle promenade

Points of this sculpture align with cairn at summit of Sliabh Donard

Meanwhile, Newcastle’s main street is a long, colorful string of cafés, boutiques, arcades, cafés, spas, restaurants, and did I mention cafés? Many of these establishments are delightful, and one in particular is delightfully weird and a welcome surprise.

Main shopping street in Newcastle

Olive Bizarre is found at the far end of the promenade. Only fitting, as most odd things and weird places are found at the fringes. My friend Lisa wanted to take me there for a small bite because she’s friendly with the owner and because, as she said, “They have nice scones, nice coffee, nice everything.” She also stressed she wanted me to use the bathroom there. “When we get there, go to the bathroom,” she told me. I didn’t argue. I’ve long learned that when an Irishwoman tells you to do something, you do it—no questions asked.

Lisa, her husband, and I had just sat down and ordered fancy-schmancy coffees and scones (and I mean real scones—not the dried-up, triangular doorstops and window breakers that pass for scones in America) with jam and cream when Lisa ordered me to the loo. “Take your camera,” she said. This was getting weird.

A true scone

Lisa came with me. Even weirder. As we walked down a long, cornered hallway to the bathroom, a definite theme emerged.

Lisa let me step into the bathroom first. It was like Dorothy stepping out of her tornado-thrown, black-and-white Kansas farmhouse into the strange and marvelous land of Oz. I sat on “the throne,” petted the wall, posed for pictures, and had the best time I’ve ever had in a bathroom since those tender, toddler days when I still played with a rubber duckie.

Petting the grass wall in the loo of Olive Bizarre

After the toilet photo shoot, Lisa and I returned to our table. We ate some of the best scones I’ve ever had (Lisa and Declan sharing a raspberry and coconut one, myself devouring your classic fruit scone), while I eyed the elderly couple beside us, pouring tea from a pot covered in a woolly pink and lavender tea cozy that matched the woman’s dress suit. Was the match-up coincidence? Or planned? I suppose anything’s possible in the wonderfully weird Olive Bizarre café.