We are feeling a bit sad because our good friend Gabe Nelson has decided to hang up his walking boots and retire as a DC Tours guide.
On Saturday 30th November he’ll take out one final Best of Belfast tour and then he’s done.
Gabe has been with us for seven years, since 2017, when we went for dinner at his house to celebrate his recent retirement from the civil service. Our wives went to Belfast Art College together, so we’ve all known each other for years.
Now anyone who knows Gabe and his wife will be well aware that they are really excellent hosts, and before we knew it we had gone from enthusiastically celebrating his retirement to discussing all the great things he was going to do with his spare time. And then he mentioned that he thought it would be fun to be a tour guide….
Gabe took to tour guiding like a duck to water and loved taking visitors around the city to tell them about the journey that we have all been on and to show them how far we’ve come. And he did it all in his famously mellifluous voice – we didn’t call him Belfast’s answer to Morgan Freeman for nothing!
I hope Gabe won’t mind me saying that he was our oldest guide – he was born in the late ‘50s and grew up in North Belfast before and after the ‘Troubles’ started. When he got married he moved to East Belfast and he’s lived in that part of the city ever since.
Because he was born ten years before the ‘Troubles’ started and lived in Belfast all his life, he had a unique and very personal experience of the Troubles. He was the only one of us who actually knew what it was like to live a “normal” childhood here, for example.
We are really sorry to see Gabe retiring, but I’m sure he’s looking forward to spending more time with his grandchildren, as well as enjoying his hobbies of travelling, making fused glass jewellery, and of course cooking. That’s one hobby I really want him to focus on, on a very personal level!
So enjoy your second retirement Gabe, and don’t be a stranger!
