Antrim

I got a road map out, drew a line due north from Newry and stopped when I hit the Atlantic.   Ballycastle.

This stretch of the Antrim coast is like a N. Irish theme park with the poetry of the shipping forecast thrown in,  

We passed a sign to the dark hedges and said we may as well take the detour as we were here,  We paid a fiver to park in the carpark next to a Paddy Wagon tourist bus covered in green leprechauns and passed a small groups of grim looking people.  I kind of appreciated their grimness when we got to the avenue of twisted trees.  It wasn't dark and brooding,  We'd seen more spectacular things for free in the Mournes and elsewhere along the route north

Fair Head didn't deceive.  The cliffs were empty and vast.  Opposite us was the Mull of Kintyre, Kathleen had calmed to an uncanny stillness and skylarks sang high above us. It was breathtakingly beautiful. We walked for an hour or so,  creeping across rocks on hands and knees and lying on our fronts to get the vertiginous thrill of the drop. 

The rain set in and we ate at Marconi's on the sea front in Ballycastle before taking the coast road towards Malin Head, avoiding the rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede and pushed on to the Causeway.  

(My daughter is putting me under pressure to watch a film, this being my last evening, but even without that pressure I'm ashamed to say I'd find it hard to find the right words to describe the Causeway experience.)

We walked the high cliff path and took the steps down and round to the Amphitheatre.  The suns slid waterly in and out of the high cloud. The rain had stopped momentarily.  The waves swelled and broke on the rocks and the light was silver.  I have never been any where like it.