Causeway Coastal Route - Northern Ireland

Tuesday 20th July 2010

We had a fabulous breakfast at our B&B before setting out for the day. They have this stuff called potato bread - yummy! That was of course along with the bacon, eggs, pork sausage, beef sausage and soda bread. Add baked beans and tomato for Ray (and mushrooms for anyone who wants them) - The Full English Breakfast!! - with slight variations in different countries (like Black Pudding - hmm).

Anyway - we were treated to some of the "14 shades of green" that we felt we had missed out on in the Republic of Ireland - that was on the way to the Coastal Causeway Route - the top end of Northern Ireland It didn't take too long before we hit the coast and were treated to some stunning views.
Beaches...............

Cliffs and more beaches.......

More cliffs - white ones (like Dover, but less spectacular)

And around and around we went until we go to the Giant's Causeway. Of course there are all sorts of scientific, geological explanations for this and interestingly there is one opposite in Scotland pretty much the same.

So the story goes.....

The Irish Giant wanted to have a go at the Scottish Giant so he busily built a causeway across. Now - when he got there and got a look at how big the Scottish Giant actually was he hotfooted it back across to his own side. The Scottish Giant came after him so he got his wife to hide him. She dressed him up as a baby and put him in a big cradle. When the Scottish Giant got a load of how big the Baby Giant was he figured the father must be absolutely massive so he ran back across his own side, tearing up the causeway as he ran - hence there's just some of it on either side.

Whatever the explanation it is fabulous.

We drove further around the Causeway Coastal Route to find a rope bridge - we figured we might as well try it out. From the car park was this view below. Hard to see in the non-doctored photo is a sort of spiralling white wall on the foremost island. With the benefit of binoculars Ray confirmed that it was indeed a wall! And I'll never know if was drystone or not!!!

We left the car and walked UP (of course) to the Information Centre for the rope bridge. We took one look, several photos and then went back to the car. These legs can only carry us so far and the distance TO the bridge was bad enough, let alone across it and back again!

We continued down the road and looked back. If you squint really hard - or maybe get a magnifying glass you can just see the rope bridge in this photo.

We actually abandoned the rest of the Causeway Coastal Route to head back to Omagh to go and see the American Irish Folk Museum but we missed out because we assumed like everything else it would stay open later in Summer. Wrong!!

A little more greenery on the way home, dinner at the pub and home to bed!