Giant's Causeway
August 8 - Bus tour of the Antrim Coast - Carrickfergus, Carrick-a-Rede, Bushmills, Giant's Causeway
As the day dawned gray and cloudy, Cheryl and I packed up our backpacks, put them in luggage storage, ate a massively filling egg and cheese on soda bread with a sad cup of instant coffee, and boarded a bus for a tour of the Antrim Coast. If we had an extra month I would spend it here. The north coast is ridiculously beautiful and varied, full of glacial valleys and waterfalls, seaside cliffs and ancient ruins.
We first stopped at Carrickfergus Castle just outside Belfast.
When John de Courcy and the Anglo-Normans conquered Ulster in the twelfth century, the castle became an important military stronghold. Life-sized plastic figures depict medieval life and provide many opportunities for surreptitious molestation.
From there the bus hurtled along the small coastal road toward Carrick-a-Rede. We rode through green fields dotted with sheep, clunky medieval bridges spanning rivers and canals, more castles, and a lough (lake) raised to the highest level our tour guide had ever seen due to the persistent rain. I managed to suffer my first bout of motion sickness exacerbated by the bus’ high center of gravity and the narrow twisty road. Luckily, we arrived at the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge before things got out of hand and a beautiful day of blue skies and shining sun greeted us for the first time since our arrival.
The rope bridge is included in the tour as a bit of tourist excitement. A sturdy pine and rope bridge hangs thirty meters over open sea, connecting the mainland to a small island once used for salmon fishing.
Apparently the original bridge was much more thrilling to walk over as the North Antrim website explains:
Spanning a chasm some eighty feet deep is the famous Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, its construction once consisted of a single rope hand rail and widely spaced slats which the fishermen would traverse across with salmon caught off the island. The single handrail was subsequently replaced by a two hand railed bridge, the current, caged bridge was installed by the National Trust during Easter of 2000 as a further safety measure. Although no-one has ever been injured falling off the old bridge, there have been many instances of visitors being unable to face the return walk back across the bridge, resulting in them being taken off the island by boat. A collection of old photographs in Sheep Island View Hostel show a local man doing various stunts on the bridge which include riding a bicycle across it and performing handstands on a chair in the middle. Primarily a 'seasonal' working bridge for the fishermen, since the demise of salmon fishing along the coast, the bridge is nowadays more widely used by passing visitor's and marketed as a tourist attraction.
The National Trust now runs a tight ship. There are separate queues for entrance, crossing, and return crossing, controlled by young people in polo shirts with radios. The sea was splendid though and the air filled with wheeling gulls.
From Carrick-a-Rede we stopped by Bushmill’s Distillery, a maker of Irish whiskey. 
Cheryl’s guidebook recommends the tour, as Bushmill’s is still a working plant while Jameson’s in Dublin is not. During the week visitors see men doing whatever it is they do to barley and yeast in complicated vats. You may even meet Colum, Bushmill’s Master Distiller. We settled for breathing in the sour yeasty air and watching folks sample the goods.
Finally we arrived around lunchtime at the Giant’s Causeway.
As Wikipedia says, there are two conflicting reports of the geological formation:
During the Paleogene period, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled rapidly, contraction occurred. While contraction in the vertical direction reduced the flow thickness (without fracturing), horizontal contraction could only be accommodated by cracking throughout the flow. The extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today. The basalts were originally part of a great volcanic plateau called the Thulean Plateau which formed during the Paleogene period.
The basalt column nonsense is all well and good, but doesn’t explain how the site got its name, leading to an alternative theory of creation:
Legend has it that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart Benandonner. One version of the legend tells that Fionn fell asleep before he got to Scotland. When he did not arrive, the much larger Benandonner crossed the bridge looking for him. To protect Fionn, his wife Oonagh laid a blanket over him so he could pretend that he was actually their baby son. When Benandonner saw the size of the 'infant', he assumed the alleged father, Fionn, must be gigantic indeed. Therefore, Benandonner fled home in terror, ripping up the Causeway in case he was followed by Fionn. The "causeway" legend corresponds with geological history in as much as there are similar basalt formations (a part of the same ancient lava flow) at the site of Fingal's Cave on the isle of Staffa in Scotland.
Whatever the cause of the Causeway, the place is a photographer’s dream. Basalt columns exist all over the world, and their unique structure boggles the mind everywhere.
All in all, a wonderful day and especially lucky with the weather. My favorite part was meeting a group of nuns who had obviously bypassed a fence that said "Do Not Enter" to climb up to the pipe organ structure off the upper cliff path. Robed in red habits with sneakers, they took pictures by the basalt columns while pretending to fall off the rocks, miming "Save me, Gabriel!" Hysterical.
As the day dawned gray and cloudy, Cheryl and I packed up our backpacks, put them in luggage storage, ate a massively filling egg and cheese on soda bread with a sad cup of instant coffee, and boarded a bus for a tour of the Antrim Coast. If we had an extra month I would spend it here. The north coast is ridiculously beautiful and varied, full of glacial valleys and waterfalls, seaside cliffs and ancient ruins.
We first stopped at Carrickfergus Castle just outside Belfast.
When John de Courcy and the Anglo-Normans conquered Ulster in the twelfth century, the castle became an important military stronghold. Life-sized plastic figures depict medieval life and provide many opportunities for surreptitious molestation.
From there the bus hurtled along the small coastal road toward Carrick-a-Rede. We rode through green fields dotted with sheep, clunky medieval bridges spanning rivers and canals, more castles, and a lough (lake) raised to the highest level our tour guide had ever seen due to the persistent rain. I managed to suffer my first bout of motion sickness exacerbated by the bus’ high center of gravity and the narrow twisty road. Luckily, we arrived at the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge before things got out of hand and a beautiful day of blue skies and shining sun greeted us for the first time since our arrival.The rope bridge is included in the tour as a bit of tourist excitement. A sturdy pine and rope bridge hangs thirty meters over open sea, connecting the mainland to a small island once used for salmon fishing.
Apparently the original bridge was much more thrilling to walk over as the North Antrim website explains:Spanning a chasm some eighty feet deep is the famous Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, its construction once consisted of a single rope hand rail and widely spaced slats which the fishermen would traverse across with salmon caught off the island. The single handrail was subsequently replaced by a two hand railed bridge, the current, caged bridge was installed by the National Trust during Easter of 2000 as a further safety measure. Although no-one has ever been injured falling off the old bridge, there have been many instances of visitors being unable to face the return walk back across the bridge, resulting in them being taken off the island by boat. A collection of old photographs in Sheep Island View Hostel show a local man doing various stunts on the bridge which include riding a bicycle across it and performing handstands on a chair in the middle. Primarily a 'seasonal' working bridge for the fishermen, since the demise of salmon fishing along the coast, the bridge is nowadays more widely used by passing visitor's and marketed as a tourist attraction.
The National Trust now runs a tight ship. There are separate queues for entrance, crossing, and return crossing, controlled by young people in polo shirts with radios. The sea was splendid though and the air filled with wheeling gulls.
From Carrick-a-Rede we stopped by Bushmill’s Distillery, a maker of Irish whiskey. 
Cheryl’s guidebook recommends the tour, as Bushmill’s is still a working plant while Jameson’s in Dublin is not. During the week visitors see men doing whatever it is they do to barley and yeast in complicated vats. You may even meet Colum, Bushmill’s Master Distiller. We settled for breathing in the sour yeasty air and watching folks sample the goods.Finally we arrived around lunchtime at the Giant’s Causeway.
As Wikipedia says, there are two conflicting reports of the geological formation:During the Paleogene period, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled rapidly, contraction occurred. While contraction in the vertical direction reduced the flow thickness (without fracturing), horizontal contraction could only be accommodated by cracking throughout the flow. The extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today. The basalts were originally part of a great volcanic plateau called the Thulean Plateau which formed during the Paleogene period.
The basalt column nonsense is all well and good, but doesn’t explain how the site got its name, leading to an alternative theory of creation:
Legend has it that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built the causeway to walk to Scotland to fight his Scottish counterpart Benandonner. One version of the legend tells that Fionn fell asleep before he got to Scotland. When he did not arrive, the much larger Benandonner crossed the bridge looking for him. To protect Fionn, his wife Oonagh laid a blanket over him so he could pretend that he was actually their baby son. When Benandonner saw the size of the 'infant', he assumed the alleged father, Fionn, must be gigantic indeed. Therefore, Benandonner fled home in terror, ripping up the Causeway in case he was followed by Fionn. The "causeway" legend corresponds with geological history in as much as there are similar basalt formations (a part of the same ancient lava flow) at the site of Fingal's Cave on the isle of Staffa in Scotland.
Whatever the cause of the Causeway, the place is a photographer’s dream. Basalt columns exist all over the world, and their unique structure boggles the mind everywhere.
All in all, a wonderful day and especially lucky with the weather. My favorite part was meeting a group of nuns who had obviously bypassed a fence that said "Do Not Enter" to climb up to the pipe organ structure off the upper cliff path. Robed in red habits with sneakers, they took pictures by the basalt columns while pretending to fall off the rocks, miming "Save me, Gabriel!" Hysterical.
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10:22 AM
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