A meeting in the TQ this morning took an exciting turn when the chap I was meeting extended a last-minute invitation to join him at some fancy shebang being held at the Belfast Metropolitan College. Hoping (as always) for a free meal (in vain as it turned out), we blagged our way in to a room full of – goodness! Is that the First Minister and Deputy First Minister? And hello again, Lord Mayor! Naomi Long, how nice to see you! Yes, it was a room full of the great and the good – and me. Who still wasn’t really sure what it was all for…

All was revealed as we took our seats for the speeches. It was the launch of a long-planned project to open up the access links to Titanic Quarter – particularly, in this case, the foot/cycle path from Bridge End Station and East Belfast into the TQ. If you’ve ever got off the train at Bridge End and walked to the Odyssey, you’ll know that up until now it was an excitingly death-defying trek along the footpath beside the Sydenham Dual Carriageway, with a heart-warming view of trucks thundering past in clouds of exhaust fumes. But at one point, just after you’ve crossed the footbridge, you can look through the railings of a metal fence and see a tantalisingly-close glimpse of the TQ and the Harbour Road – before the footpath takes you away towards the four-lane highway of screaming traffic.

Well, the gate in that fence is now being opened – in fact it was opened, in the presence of all the dignitaries (and me) this morning, so that the path connecting the station to the Harbour Rd – the old route used by countless thousands of shipyard workers over the generations – could be walked-upon for the first time in 10 years. As well as connecting up the train station, the route also connects the TQ to the Connswater Greenway – so suddenly, with the opening of one little gate, the ways and means of getting to the see the sights and sites of this fabulous part of the city have multiplied.

A new path that’s also an old path; history and future combined in the same footprint; Good News for Belfast… it’s a typical Titanic Quarter story…

More details on the Beeb here

And I could also mention that this unexpected and star-studded start to the day wasn’t even the most exciting thing to happen today – but one thing at a time, my lovelies, one thing at a time…