From Best to a better Belfast

When I was a kid, I had a mate whose dad would rave about George Best, the greatest footballer on the planet, he claimed.

He once played us a documentary showcasing Best’s talents (on and off the pitch). My abiding memory is not of Best bamboozling defenders or nightclubbing with glamorous women at his side, it’s of the song that sound-tracked the documentary: Belfast Boy by Don Fardon.

This catchy pop tune became so embedded in my head that whenever I have subsequently flown into George Best Belfast City Airport, I hear Fardon’s voice: “Georgie, Georgie, they call him the Belfast Boy…..”

Reaching the UK Singles Charts in 1970, that anthemic tune is stirring again today as I walk around east Belfast, where Best was born in 1946. His terraced childhood home, on the Cregagh Estate, is now a guesthouse, offering accommodation decorated with memorabilia. As well as Best family portraits and his old school reports, it displays handwritten letters that George sent home from across the Irish Sea, which he had crossed, aged 15, to join Manchester United, where he would go on to win a glut of trophies.

You can discover Best’s former haunts on tours - either with an audio guide or a local expert. Highlights include the Glentoran Oval, home of the football club that infamously rejected young George for being “too small and lightweight”, and WJ Desano, his favourite ice cream parlour. Established in 1938, it still delivers the goods, at 344 Newtownards Road - the main thoroughfare going east out of the city.

That’s a few minutes walk from the EastSide Visitor Centre, the district’s cultural hub, whose outer wall sports a huge mural depicting Best and other luminaries to emerge from east Belfast, including musicians Van Morrison, Gary Moore and David Holmes and the author CS Lewis.

The centre actually fronts onto CS Lewis Square, with the surrounding landscaped paths and garden studded with sculptures of characters from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Written in the early 1950s, as part of the Chronicles of Narnia saga, the book was another childhood staple of mine and I feel young again as I come face to face with Aslan (the lion), the White Witch and Mr Tumnus.

Also here is a statue of a man opening a wardrobe, based on the character Digory Kirke from The Magician’s Nephew, the penultimate novel of Lewis’ Narnia tales.

It’s worth popping inside the visitor centre. It has a cafe and exhibits, artworks and displays inspired by the people who grew up in this district, which is now a mix of the residential and post-industrial. A century or so ago, the local economy was heavily driven by linen mills, whiskey distilleries, tobacco factories and the Harland & Wolff shipyard, where Titanic was built.

Best’s father, Dickie, worked as an iron turner on the shipyard, while Van Morrison’s dad, George, was an electrician there.

Foot and bike paths wind up towards the shipyard from the visitor centre via Victoria Park, a 9km linear park that traces the course of the Connswater, Knock and Loop rivers with sports pitches, play and nature areas, including a lake on which waterfowl congregate.

As I walk through the park, curlews and grey herons catch my eye along with the planes taking off from - and coming in to land - at the neighbouring city airport, which was renamed after Best in 2006, a year after his death, aged 59.

The shipyard sprawls to the west of Victoria Park and is now part of the Titanic Quarter with several attractions boasting connections to the doomed vessel (including a museum, hotel and distillery). You’ll glimpse the shipyard’s gigantic yellow cranes from several kilometres away. Nicknamed “Samson” and “Goliath”, they’re now synonymous with Belfast’s skyline but only shot up in the late 1960s, early 1970s, when both Best and “Van the Man” were rocketing to fame.

Stroll south of the EastSide Visitor Centre, alongside the riverside trail, past a retail park, and you’ll soon find yourself in “The Hollow”, a serene wooded spot with the Connswater, now a mere stream, burbling past.

Van Morrison used to live around the corner and would hang out here as a youngster. This was, apparently, the “hollow” he mentioned in Brown Eyed Girl.

That’s another tune that regularly plays in my head when I’m in Northern Ireland. However, by the time I’m flying out of George Best Belfast City Airport, there’s only one song floating through my mind. “Georgie, Georgie, they call him the Belfast boy. . .

+ Steve McKenna was a guest of Tourism Northern Ireland. They have not influenced or read this story before publication. fact file + For guided tours and self-guided trails that follow in the footprints of east Belfast legends, see visiteastside.com + The EastSide Visitor Centre is a 10-minute taxi ride from Belfast city centre or a slightly longer journey on the Glider bus, which you can catch from outside City Hall. For more information on visiting Belfast and Northern Ireland, see discovernorthernireland.com