Today’s excursion is the one I most wanted to do. For whatever reason, the Giants Causeway has been on my bucket list. Ever since I saw pictures of this amazing geological formation, I’ve wanted to see it for myself.
We are in Portrush, Northern Island. We’re anchored out at sea, so we have to go by ship’s tender into the village. Each tender takes 80 people and so getting 80 old ladies from the ship into the tender is no small feat.
Portrush is a big summer holiday location. The village of 3,000 residents swells to 20,000 in the summer. There’s been a housing boom as people buy second homes for holidays. It seems to be a nice little village and it is clearly a summer tourist town. One of the big draws is long, golden sand beaches, although the Irish sea is very cold for swimming.
It was a very picturesque drive to the Giant’s Causeway. As you can tell from some of the photos above, the weather wasn’t so great for a day outside. It didn’t take long to get from Portrush along the Antrim coastline to the causeway. The road in places is right at the edge of the cliff, though, so it was a little scary to be going along the winding, narrow road right at cliff’s edge. We did catch a glimpse of the castle we’ll be visiting after the causeway, Dunluce.
The Giant’s Causeway is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its geological significance. It is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns that were created through explosion of lava through chalk beds. As the lava cooled, it fractured similar to what mud does in dry lake beds. As the cooling descended, pillars were formed. These pillars fractured both vertically and horizontally into what’s known as biscuits. These horizontal fractures were often concave on the top side and convex on the bottom side. The vertical fractures caused mostly octagonal pillars.
How it got its name Giant’s Causeway is a folk tale about two giants on opposite sides of the Irish Sea, one in Ireland and one in Scotland. The giants challenged each other to a duel. The Scottish giant built a causeway so he could cross the sea to fight the Irish giant. One giant fakes out the other and ultimately races back across the causeway, destroying it so the other giant can’t chase him. It’s kind of a weird story. At any rate, I was excited to see the basalt pillars and biscuits.
Because it was raining and the walk of about 25 minutes was downhill, Christine stayed in the visitor center while I set out. The coastal scenery was gorgeous, even in the rain.
The basalt pillars and biscuits were very interesting. We were warned that the basalt would be very slippery, especially in the rain, so it was with caution that I ventured out a bit onto some of the biscuits. I heard one woman say that she wished the stones in her garden look as good as these formations. It was amazing to see all these octagonal stones interlocking so nicely.
In addition to the more eroded biscuits that were quite flat, thicker biscuits of basalt were stacked up.
You can easily see the pillars of basalt and how they area fractured vertically and horizontally.
It’s hard to take in the full spectrum of the basalt. The pillars and biscuits stretch for a long way. It’s difficult to get good pictures because it’s slippery and walking to where a good photo can be taken is life threatening.
By now, it was raining pretty hard, and I had a 25-minute uphill walk to tackle. By the time I got back to the visitor center, I was soaked. I met up with Christine and we looked at some of the displays in the visitor center. Then it was time to get back on the bus for a short ride to Dunluce Castle.
The first Dunluce Castle was built in the 13th century. In the 1500s, there was a succession of clans living in the castle, but by the late 1600s, the castle fell into disrepair and the inhabitants were not able to afford the upkeep. By the early 1700s, the castle was raided for its stones and that was pretty much the end of the castle. An archeological dig in 2011 found that there was an entire village near the castle and so the area was really a thriving community in its heyday.
I thought the castle remnants were really cool and I enjoyed walking around the site.
One view from the castle along the coast was beautiful because you could make out an arch of stone with a window through it.
And that brought us to the end of our excursion. We bussed back to the harbor and boarded our tender. Back on the ship, we had a nice lunch and then retired to our cabin for a rest and some blogging. We went to the port talk and learned about Tobermory, Scotland, where we’ll be tomorrow. Then we went to dinner in the big dining room. The food has been really good.
After dinner, it was back to the cabin. There’s no show tonight, so we’re happy about that so we can get to bed at a decent hour and I can catch up blogging. If I don’t do it right away, I forget things, and since this blog has become such a good memory book for us, I want to keep it up. So, I’m now all caught up.