At the wheel of a Jaguar X-Type, Kevin Doyle zips along the Antrim Coast toward a long-overdue reality check.

Blame it on Peewee. Not long before our first holy communion, Peewee Riley taught me two things: the hard facts about where babies come from, and that Northern Ireland was a dangerous place. "My mom says that they're having troubles in the North," she explained with authority over candy cigarettes one day after school, "and anyone who goes there will probably get shot."

Peewee was right about the babies, so I figured she must be right about Northern Ireland, too. With nothing to challenge this seven-year-old's admonition (abetted, no doubt, by a string of 1990s Oscar-nominated movies depicting the conflict), I held on to this absurd image of the country for almost 30 years, until another friend—with a slightly more informed worldview—chastised me for my childish position. "You think Northern Ireland is nothing but checkpoints strung together with barbed wire?" she asked. "There's hardly a more beautiful place on earth. Why don't you go and see for yourself?"

Shame being a powerful motivator, I find myself standing outside pint-sized Belfast City Airport in a cool September drizzle, as my cobalt-blue Jaguar X-Type purrs up to the curb. "Get in and I'll take ye round to the roadway out of town," shouts Tony, Jaguar's jovial Belfast deliveryman. Off we go, speeding past a parade of container ships and towering cranes along the Lagan. "You see over to the left," Tony says, gesturing to a block of eyesore high-rise housing projects. "That's the Protestants. And over there on the right is where the Catholics live." Sure enough, the Union Jack and Irish flags hang out of apartment windows here and there on either side of the roadway, a broad and unbridgeable partition between these two bleak blocs.

Tony drops me at a gas station near the entrance to the highway, and I ask him for any advice he might over before I'm set free. "You'll be just fine," he says, "as long as you remember to keep the passenger on the shrub side. And if anyone asks, tell "em that yer Mormons from America!"

Belfast to Carnlough

The gray skies that extended their damp welcome this morning have turned suddenly blue. My destination is the northern coast, but, tipped off by a friendly seatmate on the flight here, I make a short detour ten miles south on the M1 to the village of Hillsborough. I maneuver up its narrow main street of slick paving stones, past fancy antiques stores and knickknack shops painted pastel pink, yellow, and blue, and park at the top of the hill, opposite Hillsborough Castle. As it happens, I catch the last tour of the year before this handsome eighteenth-century Georgian mansion is once again closed to the public, to serve as a home away from home for visiting royals and foreign dignitaries.

The castle's manicured gardens are worthy of Versailles and its graceful rooms are hung with sparkling chandeliers, but it's the rather homely display of guest books laid out neatly along an oaken table that draws the biggest crowds. Behind a red velvet rope, the signatures of Queen Elizabeth and her clan are all on view. A lone autograph set off to one side has visitors standing three deep: Written with a bold and flamboyant movie-star flourish, it reads simply, "Diana."