Northern Ireland - April 25 - 27

Well Duncan and I maxamised our Carbon Footprint (not in a good way) by taking a cheap flight to Belfast on Friday night. Once we arrived at the airport we picked up our hire car and headed north to the coast.

Our destination was a small harbour village called Ballintoy, and a hostel called Sheep Island View. It is a gorgeous little town and true to its word the hostel did have a view of Sheep Island... this being more of a great big rock than an island, although it did have lots of green grass on top. It was said that the Island had enough grass to fatten 10 sheep, feed 11 sheep or starve 12, that is if you could get them up the sheer cliffs and onto the grass!

We had been a little worried about the weather because the forecasts had suggested it was going to rain all weekend, and as we walked down the driveway with Seamus the owner of the hostel, we though that this was going to be so. But as he said "four seasons in one day" and after a short intense shower in the morning, it fined up to be mostly sunny for the rest of the day. And although it was still quite cool with the breeze, I still managed to get sunburned on my nose.

Our first stop was Ballycastle the neighbouring town where we found the local bakery for breakfast. From there we drove to down to Ballintoy Harbour. One thing i found quite remarkable was the location of the harbours. It seems when you are driving around the Irish coast that nothing is at sea level but that all the towns and villages are raised up and separated from the sea by cliffs. Yet follow a small road or glen and your a sure to find a small harbour, beach or seaside town.

The harbour at Ballintoy was so quant and wild it was lovely, we found a little cave in the cliff which i tried to explore but it had a small lake to cross and I didn't quite trust the stepping stones.

Next it was onto the Giant's Causeway a natural wonder of Basalt columns, if you are a geologist then you would beleive that it was the result of some sort of ancient volcanic wonder, but however I am more inclined to beleive another story. It is said that there were once two fearsome giants. One named Finn MacCool lived in Northern Ireland and anothe Benandonner lived across the water in Scotland. There was much rivarly between these two giants as to who was the bigger and stronger and better giant, but they had never had the opportunity to meet to decide this. So Fin MacCool decided that the only way to settle this was to meet face to face. As there were no boats big enought to carry a giant, Finn MacCool built a bridge, a causeway if you like so that there would be no excuse for Benandonner not to come. However as he saw Benandonner coming across the causeway he panicked as he realised that Benandonner was a much bigger and stronger giant than he. He hurried to the hills to seek advice from his wife Oonagh. She dressed him in a night gown and bonnet as a baby and placed him in a makeshift crib. When Benandonner arrived at the giant's house looking for Finn MacCool, Oonagh invited him in asking him to not wake the baby. Benandonner took one look at the baby and fled back to Scotland, saying if that's the baby I have no wish to meet the father.... As he ran he tore the causeway up with him so that Finn MacCool could not follow.

On the way to Giant's Causeway we passed Dunseverick Castle, which was not so much a castle as more a pile of rocks, but the piece of real estate it was sitting on was certainly beautiful, and once again it had its own secret tiny little natural harbour.

In the afternoon we visited the Bushmills distillery. Bushmills is the oldest Whiskey distillery in the world and was having its Birthday the week we were there. Lucky timing... it was 400 years old. We did a tour which was quite interesting but i didn't find it quite informative enough, i felt there were topics left unanswered and so i was the class nerd asking all the questions. I did learn the major differences between Irish Whiskey and Scottish Whisky (apart from the spelling). The barley used for Irish Whiskey is dried in hot dry air, whereas Scottish Whiskey is dried from the smoke of peat fires. Also the Whiskey distilled at Bushmills is distilled three times which is unlike most Scottish Whisky's that are only distilled twice (although apparently this is not a hard and fast rule). The tour of course concluded with a tasting... 12 year old single malt only available for purchase at the distillery, fortunately for Duncan even this expensive one didn't appeal to my taste buds, so he got two.

From Bushmills we went to Dunluce Castle, which was very impressive, once again set on a rocky outcrop and once again like many of the old buildings, built just that bit close to the ocean, and during a dinner party in the 1600s the kitchen fell into the sea!

We headed back to the hostel for a nap before dinner and got sidetracked along the way by a van selling fresh chips......... mmmmmmmm local irish potatoes freshly cooked while you wait, not something that you get a lot of in the UK. It was soo good. So after the chips we went back to read our books and have a nap. The pub down the road had live music but it wasn't starting until 10. Unfortunately the live music wasnt quite as good as what we had become accustomed to following our trip to Doolin. It consisted of 1 man (who was struggling with his sound decks), his guitar (which you may or may not hear, depending on what setting his sound decks were on) and some interesting backing tracks..... we stayed for a few songs to be polite and then went home to bed :)

Sunday morning after breakfast, we went to Whitepark Bay for a walk along the beautful wild beach. We then went to Carrick-a Rede Rope Bridge which was used by local salmon fishermen before becoming property of the national trust and then a tourist attraction. Walking across the 30m high bridge with ocean pounding away below was fun for me, although a little nerve racking for Dunc... unfortunately his nerves affect his coordinaton and he accidently dropped the lens cap for my camera over the bridge. I think he enjoyed it though as long as he didnt look down :)

From the Rope Bridge we headed south east along the coast through the Glens of Antrim. We stopped for lunch at the gorgeous Cushendun, which I think I could have easily lived in.

From there it was back to Belfast, we folded Duncan in to the tiny space that Ryan Air sells as a seat and headed back to London.