Giant Steps

It is possible that not everything written in this post is 100% true. You might have to believe some things which seem unbelievable. Then again, maybe everything written here is true after all.

It seems that there are tales out there that once upon a time, there was a pathway connecting Ireland with the main island of Great Britain. Maybe it didn't go quite all the way to Britain, but it came pretty close. If what I've written in this paragraph so far is at all true, it's possible that the path allowed you to walk all the way from the north coast of Ireland to Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa just to the west of the Isle of Mull in present day Scotland.

Now, this path wasn't a natural phenomenon. It was made entirely from hexagonal shaped stones and was built by a man. Or more accurately, a giant. Finn McCool to be exact. Old Finn had a way of of doing things like this. He once chucked a piece of Ireland at a rival but missed; it landed in the middle of the Irish Sea and is now known as the Isle of Man. When it came to his path to Scotland, Finn just didn't want to get his feet wet when headed up north so he built a series of stepping stones. Or a causeway, if you will.

Unfortunately for Finn, his path to Scotland had an unintended consequence: it allowed Benandonner, also a giant (but a more giant giant than Finn), to make his way to Ireland to challenge Finn to a fight. Finn of course wanted no part of that bout so he asked his wife, Oona, for some help. When Benandonner came calling at their door, Oona let him know that Finn was out but welcomed him to wait for Finn's return with her and her baby, who was actually Finn in disguise. 

If a giant disguised as a baby sounds a bit farfetched, I agree. But let's keep going shall we.

While Benandonner waited for Finn's arrival, Oona cooked him some griddle cakes, although she managed somehow to make them with pieces of griddle iron inside causing Benandonner to chip a tooth. At this display of weakness, Oona mocked Benandonner's strength, declaring her baby could eat her griddle cakes with no problem. And to prove it, she fed one to Finn (minus a griddle iron of course).

Benandonner was impressed and was determined to see how sharp this baby's teeth were that he could chomp down through something so hard. It seemed to him that the best way to test the bite strength was to put his finger in the baby's month and when he did, Finn bit down hard. That must have hurt, and finding a baby that could do so much damage, Benandonner wanted no part of his daddy so he fled and made sure he destroyed the causeway during his retreat.

But he didn't get it all and today the Irish side of the path remains on the north coast of Northern Ireland in a spot known as the Giant's Causeway.

Standing where Finn McCool once trod. Always in my Timberlands.

When we first picked Ireland as our final travel destination in 2019, the place I wanted to go more than any other was the Giant's Causeway. I knew basically nothing about Ireland at that point except for the Causeway and maybe a little something about some beer. This place was a must see. I had to go see these same sized, uniform hexagonal stones for myself.

It is possible the tale of Finn McCool is a legend and not completely factual. You can choose to believe the story about Finn McCool and the Giant's Causeway if you want. Apparently science has a different explanation for these six sided stones.

Millions and millions of years ago (like 50 or 60 million), the chalk landscape of present day Ireland was subjected to a series of volcanic eruptions which laid layer after layer of basalt lava over the landscape. As the lava cooled, the particular type of basalt making up the lava cracked in a hexagonal pattern and those cracks propagated downwards through the cooling molten rock to form a series of six-sided uniformly-sized columns. To get weirder, the columns themselves ended up being layered  horizontally (the Giant's Causeway wikipedia page refers to this as biscuiting, which I guess works well enough for me to visualize).

The general theory of how this exactly happened was advanced by French scientist Nicolas Desmarest way back in 1771 but it sounds to me from reading three or four articles on the internet (always dangerous, I know...) that his hypothesis was sort of a general one, like "eh, it's probably volcanic". I could be a little off base on that one but that's how it reads to me. 

Since the late 18th century, the conditions at Giant's Causeway have been likened to drying mud, which sometimes forms a geometric pattern as the moisture making it mud-like evaporates. There have also been laboratory experiments conducting using substances like corn starch and water as recently as our own century that produced substantially similar cracking patterns, complete with the columnar-like action seen at the Causeway.

I don't know about you, but the idea the whole science explanation thing is a lot less fun than the story about Finn McCool. But priding myself on being a believer of science, I'll go with the whole lava thing. Probably.

Basalt columns. They really are like columns. And they are biscuited.

So what? So there are a few little columns of stone that happen to be six-sided. Why go all that way? Well, for a start, it's not just a few. Try 40,000 of these things. Not a typo. Forty. Thousand. And the biscuiting of these columns has produced stones at different heights forming a series of steps, although rarely with more than about a foot or so between stones. If you had wanted to build this as a man-made construct, you couldn't have done a better job than Mother Nature herself. But ain't that most always the case.

A small field of naturally formed six-sided stones would have been impressive. But 40,000 of them stretches a long way. And it's quite awe-inspiring. So, sure, they are not all exactly formed into perfect hexagons. But they are remarkably similarly sized. They are like 50,000,000 years old for crying out loud so maybe a little erosion can be forgiven. I've been to some strange landscapes in my time but I'm not sure I've ever walked over a plain quite this remarkable. And that's really saying something. These things would look absolutely gorgeous on a beautiful sunny day.

Yeah...we didn't have a beautiful sunny day. Or even a partially cloudy day. Or even fully cloudy. Well, it was fully cloudy but there was other stuff going on too.

An astonishing landscape. Not sure I've walked over something quite like this ever.

The Causeway is located on the north coast of Northern Ireland. I'm not sure if it's far enough around to the west to be fronting on the Atlantic Ocean but it sure felt like we were there on an unprotected spur of land against a very large body of water when we were there in early September of this year. The sea was wild and before we even got there we knew we were facing a weather forecast that called for rain and 20 to 30 miles per hour winds with occasional gusts to 50 mph. We went anyway. The rest of the week didn't look any better and we had a schedule. Got to stay on schedule.

It's been a while since I've seen a sea that angry. We were on a boat a couple of days prior to our day at Giant's Causeway that seemed pretty rough but it was nowhere near what we saw the day we climbed over those six-sided stones. My hope that day was that we'd be able to walk all the way out to the section of the coast known as The Amphitheatre on a nice leisurely stroll and then make our way back to the Visitor Centre maybe via an alternate route. We fell short of our goal. But had an excellent time anyway.

It is admittedly difficult to stop and smell the roses, so to speak, in an amazing natural landscape when the wind is repeatedly trying to knock you off the basalt columns you are climbing very carefully one step after the next. I'm not positive the wind gusts reached 50 mph that day but I'd totally believe they did. Those blasts stood me up, forcing me to brace into the wind if I was standing still or just stopping me in my tracks if I was walking upwind. That and the rain made it a difficult experience.

Three years ago we spent a day at Hadrian's Wall in late May with my dad. It was freezing. It shouldn't have been that windy or cold but it was. And it afforded us a measure of what the Roman soldiers stationed at the end of the empire might have experienced while gazing over empty landscapes waiting for someone dangerous to attack. I sort of felt the same way at the Causeway. Every once in a while, it's good to experience a little of Mother Nature's wrath. I'm not looking to stand in front of a hurricane or tornado or anything but a little touch every now and then is OK, even if it's not what you wanted on your end of summer holiday.

We made it that day as far as the Giant's Boot, a rock that looks suspiciously like a very large shoe (size 93-1/2 according to the Giant's Causeway website), proof perhaps that giants were at one time real and this whole science thing with the lava and the basalt and the cooling is just a load of bunk! It wasn't as far as we wanted to go but I think I was satisfied with what we saw. The weather made it an adventure. I was proud that we walked all the way from the Visitor Centre to the Boot.

Me and the Giant's Boot. It's got to be real, right? Right? 

We didn't, however, walk back. The walk from the Visitor Centre is downwind and it's refreshing how much help you welcome when walking in bad weather. The trip back was into the wind and the way those gusts buffeted my progress made me convinced that taking the shuttle bus for a mere £1 each was way way worth it. At that point we were soaking wet, cold and tired of just trying to stand up.

I wouldn't trade our Causeway experience for anything. Would it have been nice to be there on a perfect sunny day (or just partly cloudy even)? Sure. But I don't think the wind and the rain and the ocean spray made the day worse. I can think of other days I've traveled where a rainy day would have been way less enjoyable than this one. A rocky coast on the Atlantic is supposed to be unforgiving. Why would it be appropriate for us to experience anything other than what we found that day?

I'll admit, I would have liked to have been able to walk all over this remarkable natural formation. There is a real beauty in the way the stones are formed. The biscuiting has rendered some of the stones with almost identical bowl-like depressions in them. There must be a bunch of upper pieces with ball like formations that are now long gone. Even these, which stood out as puddles on our day there, seemed the same one after the other. 

Sometimes when we identify our number one attraction on vacations they disappoint. Photographs and stories sometimes make us think that places are more wonderful than they actually are. If you had told me before I went there that I would be soaking wet and subject to winds strong enough to stop me in my tracks, I'm not sure I would have looked forward to the couple of hours we spent at Giant's Causeway. 

But other than making us concentrate on where we were walking (and the stones were remarkably non-slippery by the way), it didn't affect what we did much at all. We still made it to the edge of the ocean on the stacked columns even if we had to really focus on where we were rather than taking in all we could see right away. I admit, it would have been better if the weather was perfectly sunny. I'm not convinced that the overall experience would have been better.

It's really super windy here. Makes climbing this small pile of rocks more of an accomplishment. 

One last look at the hexagons.

There are many different Irish (and even Scottish) folk tales featuring Finn McCool. His legend, if not the actual person, certainly got around. Some stories end with Finn being still alive and sleeping in a cave somewhere ready to awake when Ireland needs him most. Maybe he's somewhere in Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa like I mentioned earlier in this post, although I'm not sure how he'd get there with his stepping stones destroyed.

If you are curious, maybe you want to head up to Fingal's Cave. If you do, you will apparently find a similar spot to Giant's Causeway with similarly sized stones once trod by giants, or at least Finn and Benandonner. Sounds like a must see on a Scotland trip if I ever run out of places to go, even if it is two islands from the mainland. 

This day trip from Belfast got us to a part of Ireland I'll never forget. The gift store at the Visitor Centre sells pictures of the place at sunset suitable for framing. I guess I got to see the place on a sunny day through that one picture. No regrets though on this day. 

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How We Did It

There are plenty of bus tours which run to Giant's Causeway from Belfast each day. Since we wanted a bit of a custom itinerary including the ability to linger as long as we wanted at some spots, we decided to rent a car and drive. I think this was the right call. Belfast city centre is super easy to get out of on the motorway and once you leave the city behind, there are very few cars to contend with while driving on the wrong side of the road. There are also no one lane roads which I was thankful for. 

You can visit the Causeway for free. It's public land and if you can find a place to park and walk to it, you can enjoy it for absolutely no admission charge. However, you can't get inside the Visitor Centre without paying the admission fee. You also can't park in the Visitor Centre parking area without paying for your ticket in. We were tipped off to a couple of nearby places that we might park our car for free and then walk around the Visitor Centre to see the Causeway. We ultimately decided not to do that. This place is a part of the United Kingdom's National Trust and that organization pays for the upkeep of the property. We figured if we were going to spend time there, we should chip in for the maintenance.

The Causeway itself is typically open to the public from dawn to dusk. The Visitor Centre is open most days in the summer from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Check their website for complete details.

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