These are heady World Heritage days for County Antrim with its Game of Thrones iconography, the return of the Open Golf to Royal Portrush and a WH site in Gracehill.
All bested, of course, by the Giant’s Causeway which should always be accompanied by a wobbly walk over the Carrick-a-Rede Bridge.
It is, of course, refreshing to see sectarian Northern Ireland celebrated by UNESCO for religion.
And that is just what’s happened with the extension of the Moravian Church Settlements to include Gracehill, near Portrush.
Raving about the Moravians
All of which was lauded to the high heavens along with The Flow Land peat grounds of north Scotland, and more of which later.
Moravians have, of course, gone under the radar in a Northern Ireland defined by Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.
And we’re reminded of the Billy Connolly joke here when a Jew in Belfast explains he is neither religion.
To which his interrogator asked: ‘But are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?’
Well, the Moravian Church Settlement you’ll find in sleepy Gracehill is Protestant.
And emanates from modern-day Southern Czechia around that country’s second city Brno.
That Protestantism is used as a catch-all term is misleading as there were myriad breakaways from the Catholic Church.
Check out the Czech churches
And in Prague, the wonderfully cultural capital of Czechia, I fell in one such church,
And despite the organist on the altar having his back to the congregation I wasn’t deterred.
Where I learned that this was the original Protestant parish in these parts.
The Moravian emigrees who washed up on this northern coast of Europe’s outpost in 1758 were we are told a tolerant people.
And that they even supported pan-Irish nationalism.
And as far back as 1798 Gracehill ‘a place of refuge’ for all sides during the United Irishmen’s Rebellion.
Hail Moravia full of Gracehill
Gracehill and its schoolhouse and church are marked out as an example of a socio-religious system of its time.
And it has been the Irish village’s good fortune here to be able to piggyback on the Danish Christiansfeld Initiative.
Gracehill’s newly elevated status will it is hoped attract visitors.
Which, of course, sparked the conversation in our household around potential overtourism.
And were it to happen it would more likely rear its head in Antrim than the open areas of The Flow Land in Caithness and Sutherland.
And preserve the locals’ lifestyle
Of course, we’ll inevitably return to the challenges of overtourism and it might seem oversimplistic.
But to any community that boasts a special heritage site or achieves one then a word of advice.
Preserve first the ability of local people to afford and have the homes around them to live in.
Rather than sell them off for AirBnBs and in the same time deprive the hotel and hospitality sector of a living.
And ensure that yes, it’s heady World Heritage Days for County Antrim and The Flow Land of North Scotland.
And all sites for sore eyes.
