It was a good news story for a change. So many times in the last few years one has traversed the same road, stopping short of Armagh to veer into Portadown for the latest instalment in the long-running saga of tension, nerves and occasional violence at Drumcree and the Garvaghy Road.
This time it was on to the Cathedral City and, for a change, a positive atmosphere. Nationalists and republicans looked happy, unionists were at least relaxed.
Martin McGuinness called it a joyous day, David Trimble naturally took a more measured view. For Sinn Fein the North-South Ministerial Council is the high road to unity; for unionists it is a necessary concession to nationalists that will be balanced by Friday's establishment in London of the British-Irish Council (BIC). For nationalists it was the concrete expression of a vision: for unionists it was merely common sense.
The mood will, of course, be different on Friday. Mr Trimble will wrap the mantle of the United Kingdom around him as an antidote to republicanism and, more immediately important, dissident unionism. Rejecting the notion yesterday that the Armagh council was the anteroom to a united Ireland, he suggested the body to be set up in London would mark the re-entry of the Republic to the British-Irish family of nations.
The political motivation behind including the British-Irish Council in the Belfast Agreement in April 1998 has been explained by the former British diplomat, Sir David Goodall, who wrote in the magazine Parliamentary Brief at the time: "Its immediate purpose is to enable unionists to claim that the cross-Border provisions of the accord are set within an over-arching political structure comprising all the component nations of the British Isles."
Mr Trimble needed the political fig-leaf of the BIC yesterday. Although all four UUP ministers turned up and kept brave faces throughout the proceedings, it must have been a difficult day for them at times.
The sight of 12 ministerial cars from Dublin appearing on the brow of the hill above Palace Demesne, with a Fianna Fail cabinet member in each, was enough to make the strongest unionist blanch.
When this was followed by the thunder of an Air Corps helicopter with green, white and gold insignia, carrying the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, you knew things would never be quite the same again between North and South. More than the winter leaves on the ground were being scattered by Bertie Ahern's whirring blades as he hove to outside the Armagh council offices at 10.55 a.m.
But there was an air of civility about the event, due not least to Mr Trimble himself who maintained an unfailing good humour and conducted the four-handed news conference of the main leaders afterwards with aplomb. The last thing supporters of the peace process needed on the day was a surly unionist who looked as if he was heading towards his own execution.
The Taoiseach crystallised the significance of the event in his opening words at the meeting: elected ministers from the two main traditions and both parts of the island were gathered together in one room for the first time "to work for the common good of all the people".
There may be troubles ahead: indeed, Mr Ahern warned of this when he forecast there would be "difficult days" in the future and "many tough debates about just what the right decision is in any particular case". Already a tough day and difficult debate are looming over the non-participation of DUP ministers in the council.
The First and Deputy First Ministers did not nominate Mr Robinson and Mr Dodds to attend on this occasion, but there is the basis for a major clash on this issue, given that participation in the council is described in the Belfast Agreement as one of the "essential responsibilities" for holders of "relevant posts" in the new administration. A Drumcree-like stand-off could yet take place between the DUP and the rest of the executive.
Sinn Fein was not troubling to hide its agenda for the new body. Speaking in Irish, Ms Bairbre de Brun said its importance could not be overestimated. The new Health Minister and her colleague in the Department of Education made it clear that the project of hollowing out the union, as one analyst has called it, would proceed apace.
This is not what Mr Trimble signed on for, however, and there are right royal rows, megaphone diplomacy and maybe even walkouts further down the road.
From a unionist point of view, the sooner Friday comes the better. However modest their remit, the new implementation bodies will have offices throughout the island, from Enniskillen to Cork, from Monaghan to Belfast. A joint secretariat has been set up in Armagh, and the various boards and officials will be beavering away at their tasks from now on.
But just as, in the negotiations, "nothing was agreed until everything was agreed", likewise no element of the Belfast Agreement should be seen in isolation from the rest. As Sir David Goodall, one of the negotiators of the Anglo-Irish pact of 1985, has pointed out, new arrangements within the island of Ireland will be paralleled by steps towards a new relationship between Ireland and Britain.