Today I start off with kind of a nature post again: In one of her recent posts the fanciful and funny irish myth about the so-called Giant's Causeways was presented very well by .
She also explained the origin of this especially impressive part of the Irish coast and shortly dived into the surrounding fauna. To learn about all this I highly recommend her article!
I am not going to repeat anything of her great work, but I want to contribute some visual input, to somehow allow you all to experience this ingenious natural scenery! For this I tried to recreate my visit from last summer:
Visiting the Giant's Causeway
To get to the modern Visitor Center we had to turn onto an inconspicuous side street and followed it for a few minutes. As usual we drove through the calming evergreen landscape of Ireland. As we approached the coast, we arrived on a quite extensive parking lot in front of the modern visitor center.
It was designed in a way that it can be seen well from the land, but is almost invisible from the coast. This was done in order not to interrupt the natural beauty of the coast. Next we bought our access cards to the near Giant's Causeway and also visited a small exhibition about its history and geology. On leaving the Visitor Center on the back we got a personal audio guide and free one-ear headphones, the second can be kept afterwards.
Next we already got the first glimpse of the impressive coast:
We turned to the left, walked along the coast and found an interesting map:
So there is not only the Giant's Causeway but also the Giant's Chimneys - and there is even the Giant's Organ, which can not be seen from this side. Funnily, the 'Stookans' are known as the windiest place in Ireland. After a week's trip along the Irish coast, with permanent and mighty winds, this information hit my humor center. It seemed to me like choosing the king among the kings.
With the next photo I tried to catch the same scenery like on the map depicted.
Next we headed to the Giant's Causeway - all images can be enlarged:
Here the Giant's Chimneys can already be seen in the very back.
As a partial surface scientist, I immediately loved the hexagonal pattern!
About every 50 m we saw staffers of the Visitor Center. They serve to inform the visitors and to rush to rescue in case of accidents. As you can imagine the continuous erosion ensures that the stones are all extremely smooth. Then they are often wet too and the visitors are literally of all ages! Hence it is not surprising that one of the employes told us, that they sometimes have to call the ambulance three times a day during the peak season in summer!
The Giant's Organ stone formation a few hundred meters further.
We continued down the coast trying to also reach the Giant's Chimneys.
The weather forced us to turn around and to head back towards a safe haven, so we unfortunatelly could not visit the gigantic chimneys any closer.
Finally, two pictures as the weather got better on our way back again:
I hope you enjoyed this little fictional trip to this wonderful place!
All images were taken either with the cam of my
Honor 5C smartphone or a GoPro4 Black.
Best,
mountain.phil28