I am so bad at this consistent updating thing. I don’t even really have an exciting excuse for not posting… yeah, yeah, I’m working on it. Anyway, a week ago I ventured to Giant’s Causeway. It’s in West Northern Ireland, near Coleraine, and on the coast… as you can see. It’s a relatively normal looking coast, with the exception of this small area where the rocks are in weirdly shaped (6-sided, whatever that is. hexagonal? er…) basalt columns.
I guess there’s some sort of Irish myth about how they were formed. I’m a little sketchy on the details, but it involves a giant from Scotland and a giant from N. Ireland who were having some sort of fight. So the giant from N. Ireland built a bridge to Scotland, and once he finished he decided to take a nap before going to yell at Mr. Scottish Giant. Except, while he was napping Scottish giant crossed the bridge first. This is where I’m sketchy on the details – something involved Irish Giant’s wife convincing Scottish giant that her husband was massive and he didn’t want to confront him. Then Scottish giant got really scared and ran back to Scotland, destroying the bridge on his way, the Causeway being broken bits of it…. or something. Also, he lost his boot on the way:
Regardless of the sketchy mythical history, it was really lovely! It was actually also quite amused at how different public park type places are treated here compared to the US. If you go, well, pretty much anywhere in the US where there is a slight possibility of danger, the area seems to be infiltrated with fences and warnings and rails and other obstructive things. Here, however, it’s pretty much just this assumed “go at your own risk mentality”, which is really refreshingly anti-American. For example, you could pretty much get as close to the edges of the cliffs as you wanted. Such as here, which sort of looks a lot less daunting in a photograph than in real life. But, you can see the road down there/figure out the distance accordingly. It was insanely high.
Also, I have finally gotten around to fixing my photo gallery here, so you can see more than the few I choose to post (hooray!). The link at the top that says “photos” now works. There are a bunch of old photos, along with recent ones (to see more of the Causeway in particular, click here). My photo a day project is separate and still exists, and will likely still be more frequently updated (hence the concept of “daily”).
Anyway, have a lovely day!
Tags: giants causeway, hooray I finally fixed something, northern ireland, travel