Giant's Causeway

Backblip

After a leisurely sail from Southampton, today's port is Belfast. We all chose to do the longer tour to the Giant's Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage site - this is an extract from their website:

'The Giant's Causeway lies at the foot of the basalt cliffs along the sea coast on the edge of the Antrim plateau in Northern Ireland. It is made up of some 40,000 massive black basalt columns sticking out of the sea. The dramatic sight has inspired legends of giants striding over the sea to Scotland. Geological studies of these formations over the last 300 years have greatly contributed to the development of the earth sciences, and show that this striking landscape was caused by volcanic activity during the Tertiary, some 50–60 million years ago.'

It was a fascinating place, although difficult to get the photos you'd like as there were so many tourists there. Thankfully it was a nice day, as the stones get very slippy when wet and there's a lot of clambering around that you can do. We also had photo stops at Dunluce Castle, to see the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and a wide beach with cows on (not sure I'd like that!) and I've included some photos in the postcard in the Extras.

If you prefer to hear about the myth of the Giant Finn McCool and how he created the causeway, just click on the link http://giantscausewaytickets.com/finn-mccool

I was stunned at how beautiful Northern Ireland is, I'd obviously been too influenced by all the bad news about the troubles over the years.