Meet Adrian Hack, a tour guide from Carrickfergus who was inspired to get into the industry after learning about his family's Second World War history.

His tour of the Co Antrim coastal town focuses on its unique history during this time period, but this wasn't an industry he had been planning to work in.

Previously working as a civil servant, a careers advisor, and an office manager, Adrian realised "going out and chatting to people" was the part of his job he enjoyed the most as opposed to being desk-bound.

With a mum from Holland, who grew up in Eindhoven during the war, and a dad from Carrickfergus who joined the RAF at the age of 18, Adrian was brought up hearing stories about different experiences of the conflict.

This, alongside a series of coincidences that occurred within the same month, led the 57-year-old into the tourism industry and he hasn't looked back.

Speaking to Belfast Live, Adrian talked us through his fascination for his town's war history which is demonstrated through his Lead the Way tours, and how his upbringing played a big part in his future career.

He said: "I started doing a bit of family research because my dad passed away when I was 18. I didn't know him that well, I was out and about playing football, and working on a farm, and busy at school. He died quite suddenly and I'd never sat down and asked him what it was like growing up.

Adrian at the US Rangers museum in Carrickfergus during a tour

"So when I got into my 50s, I think it's a tipping point for most people. When you get to that age you start thinking a bit more about where you come from. I knew my dad had been born and bred in Carrick, but I knew nothing about what his life would have been like.

"From that, I did a bit of research then the penny dropped. He would have been 12 when the war broke out and 18 when it finished. He joined the RAF a few months after the war ended.

"I started finding out about things that were happening in Carrick during those six years of the war that I didn't know had happened. A tank factory was erected here after the one in Belfast was bombed in 1941, it turned out I only lived about 100 yards away from the site for 10 years and didn't know.

"I knew a wee bit about American soldiers being stationed here, but didn't realise how extensive that was, how important it was as a staging post, particularly for the formation of the US Rangers."

Finding out more and more information on this time period, through the lens of family research, timed perfectly with Adrian's early retirement.

"At the same time I started pulling all this information together, I took early retirement from the Civil Service and was looking for something else to do," he added.

"Almost the same week, someone shared a Facebook post about an introduction to tour guiding course. So I thought, I'll have a go at that, it sounds interesting, I've always loved meeting people and chatting. We were asked to go away and put together a 10 minute tour, being in Carrickfergus virtually everyone else in the group picked the castle as their topic.

Adrian during one of his tours in Carrickfergus

"I decided to pick something else, and did something on a small snippet about the American servicemen that came to Carrickfergus during the war.

"It went down so well with the rest of the group, many of them said they'd love to find out more, and this really made me wonder if it was worth creating a wider tour about it, and that's how everything really started."

As he's always learning and uncovering more information about the impact of the Second World War on Carrickfergus, Adrian's tour is constantly changing and evolving.

But he believes it's important to reduce things down to the stories of ordinary citizens living in a remarkable time, and notes the similarities of life then and life during coronavirus.

He said: "It's the stories of ordinary people that are far more important in my mind than the big events we all know about. What your grandparents might have done in that period is a far smaller story, but it's no less important.

"That must have been the most difficult time, yet they didn't talk about it very much. We've all found it difficult this past year and a half with Covid, yet what they went through for six years is a leap and a bound above that.

Adrian Hack of Lead The Way Tours

"They didn't have Zoom and Facebook to keep in touch, they must have been very frightened and lonely at times as well, just not knowing what was going on."

Researching his family history has led Adrian to believe that we all should take more time to talk to our relatives, to learn about history not from books but from those closest to home.

He continued: "We get so fixated in our own lives and I'm not sure we really take that time to look back a wee bit. It tends to be when they're gone, you wish you'd taken the time to ask a few more questions or taken a bit more interest.

"Certainly from my own dad's perspective, I have terrible guilt sometimes about not having shown interest in his younger life when he was alive, but that's just the way things work out I'm afraid.

"It's as much about not finding out history from a book, but family history, as in talk to these people before it's too late."

You can find out more about Lead the Way tours by clicking here.
