Not many of our day trips will get a post of their own, but this was a special one. Not just because what we saw was amazing, but because we all had fun the whole time. If you've traveled with kids, especially sensitive kids, you know how hard it can be…
Not many of our day trips will get a post of their own, but this was a special one. Not just because what we saw was amazing, but because we all had fun the whole time. If you've traveled with kids, especially sensitive kids, you know how hard it can be for everyone to be on the same fun level. There's exhaustion, uncertainty, differences in weather and temperature sensations, unexpected hangry-times, and just the overwhelm of being in new places all the time! And if you know me, you know I tend to overdo things - I just want to do all the things. But this was the one day that, even though the kids were reluctant to make the longish drive up to the North Coast, I heard those magical words: "I thought this was going to be boring, but it's actually really cool."
The Giant's Causeway is a Unesco World Heritage site, and is probably the biggest tourist attraction in Northern Ireland. You don't have to pay to go in, if you find somewhere else to park and you just walk around the place, but a paid tour gets you parking, and we felt the visitor's centre and tour were well worth it.
What made it really cool for the kiddos was the fact that they all got personal headsets so they could hear the tour guide over the wind, and spread out a bit down the road. You start at the visitor's centre, which is built into the landscape so well you can't really see it from the outside.
Basalt rocks begin to emerge from the hills. These cooled at a different rate from the iconic ones I'm about so show you, so they're more crumbly.
The coastline bends around many cliffs and coves. There were loads of stories about cattle smuggling and what have you, but what I remember from this image is the camel. Do you see it right in the middle?
Here you can start to see some of the basalt columns the site is known for, along with some big basalt marbles.
The columns start small, but you begin to see the hexagonal shapes. As you proceed, the columns get more and more dramatic.
These hexagonal shapes were formed after volcanic activity, basically by the rock cooling very slowly, allowing it essentially to crystalize. This was underground for a long time, but the weather basically exposed them over time.
Stringbean was really excited to go here, because her teacher had visited this place before. She was excited to get some pictures taken and send them to her teacher.
I included all these photos so you can explore these shapes and textures at your own pace. I think what makes them so stunning is the combination of regularity and irregularity. There's an illusion of made-ness, at the same time that it's all so clearly natural.
The two-tone nature of this picture makes it one of my favourites. Water brings out the dark colour of the basalt, which I think you can only see in dry basalt if its polished. The dry stones sport lichens as well.
They put a lot of effort here into making the site accessible. There are electric buses down to the main area, and anyone can take the bus back uphill for 1 pound. Personally I was just amazed that we're allowed to scramble all over the rocks to our hearts content. Only one small area was off limits as being unstable. I mean, if we had tried to boulder up the columns I think there would have been objections, but everything short of that.
We decided to keep walking around this big bowl-shaped valley because we could see another spot with lots of columns ahead. I believe the guide called this the "organ pipes" or some such.
I brought my plying spindle and plying ball, and happily plied away while we explored. Since the plying ball was already made, it was easy enough to spin it on my leg, with the ball resting in my purse on my shoulder. For me, this was much easier than trying to make singles on a drop spindle while exploring.
Rather than walking back up the road, we climbed up a dizzying set of stairs to return via the path on top of the cliff. It was very windy up there, but it was cool to see the areas we'd seen already from a different angle.
On this coastal path, which goes for miles in either direction along the coast (maybe along the whole thing, I've no idea), we were walking past fields of thistles and sheep. Very pleasing.
It's not for nothing that this is such a popular destination. Touristy, but not too camp, except when they leaned into the Finn McCool legends a little hard. (Related: be warned, there's a spot in the visitor's centre where you're invited to look through a portal, and it was a straight-up jump scare for Dooner that took her some time to recover from.) If you're a rudimentary-level geology nerd like myself, you'll love it.
As an artist, the natural geometric aesthetic is what I will take away. We like order and structure in modern design, but it's the organic twist that I find so inviting in handspun. The unpredictable, the slightly wild - working within rules and bending them at the same time. I'll keep thinking about this.
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