Barricades were being erected in Portadown, but Orangemen visiting the Donegal seaside village of Rossnowlagh on Saturday for their annual parade were having no such problems.
They were showering compliments on bemused gardai: "If only things could be like this in the North, in our own country". One visitor from Belfast went so far as to throw his arm around the chief superintendent's shoulder, a few drinks having helped dispel any inhibitions.
"It's great to come down here because you can laugh and joke," he said. A half-hearted response about alcohol consumption was ignored. "My mother is buried in Monaghan, you know."
There were about 30 gardai policing the parade, but their main task was traffic control. Coaches and cars, many with Northern registrations, snaked along the narrow country roads. More than 30 lodges, mainly from the north-western Border counties, took part.
No one expects trouble at Rossnowlagh. There's an ever increasing number of houses, as in all of Donegal's most scenic coastal areas, but whatever full-time residents there are seem to make themselves scarce for the day.
Since the RUC started blocking parades, gardai have gone up in Orangemen's estimation. One garda was told the problem of Drumcree would be solved if some of them could be brought up for the day.
"We can walk down here better than we can walk in our own country," said Mr Robert Steenson from Belfast.
Most people had the look of country people on an old-fashioned sort of day out. Cups of tea are drunk, burgers are eaten and babies in buggies wave Union flags.
The parade is a more subdued affair than those in the North. Drums are beaten but not very loudly. The rowdier type of loyalist band stays away, and there's no one in the open fields to take offence at the playing of Rule Britannia.
After the parade, a prayer service opened with Onward, Christian Soldiers. Only about a fifth of the crowd attended, as most people dispersed to have their picnics, sit around a beachside bar or tour the stalls where videos of previous years' parades are "still only £10".
Mr Noel McMull (25), an Orangeman from Convoy, Co Donegal, explained that for people living in the South it is their July 12th. "This is our heritage. The Orange Order is based on one thing and one thing only, and that's the Holy Bible," he said.