Our hotel was very nice last night, food was good (they even had a doggy menu) and bed comfortable. Forecast for today was sunny spells, dry and little wind. Graeme joined us today, as he was staying in a different hotel we met him a little out of town.
Our day wouldn’t be complete without a post breakfast hill to climb as we walked to meet Graeme with a couple of nice views back towards Ballycastle. Ballycastle can trace its history back to the founding of a settlement around Port Brittas, the old name for Ballycastle Bay. It is from here that it has been suggested that Fergus Mór Mac Eric, a purported king of Dalriada, sailed to Scotland and founded a large colony throughout Argyll. Fourth picture shows another of the paths recommended by the app, this time it was walkable (avoiding a long detour) and the overgrowth only lasted a short while. By now the weather was warming up and the clouds disappearing.
By now we we back on the coast and really starting to enjoy the views. Such a difference from previous days in terms of the weather. We had a good sight of Raithlin Island – one of 43 Special Areas of Conservation in Northern Ireland. It is home to tens of thousands of seabirds, including common guillemots, kittiwakes, puffins and razorbills, – about thirty bird families in total. Raithlin is also the only inhabited offshore island of Northern Ireland with a population of c150.
We continued walking along the coastal route where the views just kept getting better and better and could see, in the distance, the headlands where would be taking the coastal path (instead of the road). Arriving at Dunseverick Castle (or what is left of it) we could see what looked like a wedding happening down on the shore. Recorded in the Irish Annals as Dun Sobhairce, Dunseverick Castle was first fortified by an ancient chieftain, Sobhairce, from around the 5th century AD, possibly earlier and, from around the 7th century AD, was then occupied by the Dál Riada, an extended tribal group with strong maritime connections between north-east Ireland and western Scotland. It later became a centre of the Earls of Ulster around 1250–1350 AD, and then a stronghold of the O’Cahan’s and later the MacDonnells from 1560 AD.
Now on the actual coast path it seemed around every corner was a great new view of a beach, a cove or a rock formation. As with all coast paths it was quite a bit of up and down but very nice not to be pounding tarmac for the afternoon.
We could see, in some of the high cliff faces, the basalt columns that make up the Giant’s Causeway and were home to many nesting pairs of Kittiwakes. They seemed to be enjoying the warm air and the updrafts as they soared everywhere. We could also see, in the distance, all the tourists on the actual tourist site.
We had planned to go to the hotel but spotted the path down to the actual Causeway from the coast path (only 100m below us) so took the option to go straight there as the weather was so good and the tide was mostly out.
Finally we were down at the Giant’s Causeway. According to legend, the columns are the remains of a causeway built by a giant. The story goes that the Irish giant Fionn Mac Cumhail (Finn MacCool), from the Fenian Cycle of Gaelic mythology, was challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner. Fionn accepted the challenge and built the causeway across the North Channel so that the two could meet. Across the sea, there are identical basalt columns (a part of the same ancient lava flow) at Fingal’s Cave on the Scottish isle of Staffa and it is possible that the story was influenced by this. Around 50 to 60 million years ago, during the Paleocene Epoch, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive volcanic plateau. As the lava cooled, contraction occurred. Horizontal contraction fracturedin a similar way to drying mud, with the cracks propagating down as the mass cooled, leaving pillarlike structures, which also fractured horizontally into “biscuits”.
An truly amazing day, tomorrow is a rest day – revisit the causeway and a probable swim on Portrush Beach before we resume walking on Friday.
