Today’s adventure involved crossing an international border without a boat or other method to cross a large body of water. Specifically, we took a day tour north from Dublin to Giant’s Causeway and Belfast which means we were in Northern Island which is technically part of the UK, and as such uses pounds sterling for currency, but is part of the island of Ireland (and geocaching finds are in Ireland rather than in the UK).
The guide was a nice guy, but not by any means a gifted guide. He was however interested in learning about some of the caches June and I found throughout the day including at a few of the “bonus because we seem to have extra time because we didn’t let you spend enough time at the highlight of the day” spots. The people sitting behind us on the bus were also interested in our caching exploits.
Giant’s Causeway along the ocean, specifically (based on my extensive internet research and corroborated by June’s equally extensive research) the North Channel of the Irish Sea. It’s composed of columnar basalt, which is an igneous (volcanic) rock that is also common in central Oregon. The basalt tessellates into hexagons, and it almost looks like a stack hexagonal legos placed next to each other. There are two routes to get there from the parking area, one goes up to see it from above, the other goes down to see it at sea level.
We chose to go up, and we were blown away. Figuratively and (almost) literally. At one point there was a 90-degree turn along a fence with a corner and the wind was blowing so hard that I steadied myself against the fence before the turn while I waited for the wind to die down. After a while it was clear that it wasn’t abating, so I walked carefully along the fence and then made the turn. At this point I felt like a marionette (or perhaps a better image is the cartoon character Road Runner) as the wind was pushing me so hard that my legs could barely keep up. I would lift one leg and before I could get that leg fully down the wind lifted my other leg so it was like I was almost moving in mid-air and only occasionally setting my feet down. A very strange and surprisingly pleasant sensation.
The views were spectacular! Big, white, and frequent waves two or more meters tall crashing into coves. Outside of the coves, the water was grayish green where there was lots of cloud cover, and brighter green and blue where it was sunny. Inside the coves the water was almost all white. The coves were fairly flat, covered by lush green plants such as ferns, blackberries, grass and also some rocks, surrounded by a semicircle of basalt. It smelled and sounded like the ocean, not surprising, but still delightful. Did I mention it was windy?
We descended, in some places protected from the wind and in others quite exposed. At one point June took a picture of me with some of my hair going up(!) from my head at an angle much more vertical than horizontal. This was when so much hair had come out of my ponytail that I finally took the hair and out, posed for pictures, then put the hairband back in….and not in the windiest spot, I might add. Needless to say, we were grateful we’d walked in the direction we did because climbing the steep hill along the path and stairs would have been challenging to say the least even without the wind, and surprisingly we’d been fortunate to have mostly tailwinds and almost no headwinds.
At the bottom we could see the cliffs and some nice examples of white-ish columnar basalt. There was an area of foamy water that was so jiggly that I took a video to show the movement of the bubbles. The color was tan, but otherwise it looked not unlike a luxurious bubble bath.
There was a rock that looks like a boot that’s supposedly size 93.5 (presumably using British sizes), but I will resist the urge to describe the mythology behind the rock.
We then approached a monolith of columnar basalt. It was at least 4 times my height, and at least 75 columns wide. With my arms outstretched I could span about 4 columns. Upon closer inspection, the columns seemed to be composed of blocks of varying heights; in some places I was 2 blocks tall, in others I was 8 blocks tall. Amazing and gorgeous.! Around the back side the basalt had shorter pieces that almost looked either like an amphitheater, or a poorly done clear cut. Some of the rock tops were convex and others concave.
Unfortunately, we needed at least a day to fully explore, and we had only two hours so clearly my sense of “enough time” at Giant’s Causeway” wasn’t remotely possible in a day trip. I realize we’ve spent only a few days in Ireland and it’s clearly north enough so I will have to return. That said, of all the Irish places I’ve been, this is the one I most want to visit again someday.
After we left Giant’s Causeway we stopped at a couple of nice viewpoints and a nice walkway set between at least a hundred beech trees and each location had a geocache that we found. Indeed, the time would have been far better spent at Giant’s Causeway.
We got to Belfast and the guide didn’t offer a single suggestion of what to do or where to go and gave us two hours to explore (did I mention that more time at Giant’s Causeway would have been preferable?). We walked for a bit in search of food but were a bit frustrated. We were headed back to something not entirely impressive that we’d spotted early when we turned and saw a red building that said Fibber Magee and then in a much smaller font, general merchant. Hmm. We popped in and it turned out to be a pub that served food, and, fortuitously one that wasn’t especially smoky. I had a delicious burger with decent chips (fries), June’s soup was a bit less successful. When the serve brought the fries we asked about malted vinegar, my topping of choice, and she directed us to the “purple” packets in the basket she’d brought. There were also red (ketchup), yellow (mayonnaise), blue (tartar sauce) and brown (barbecue sauce), and no I didn’t take a picture. I didn’t need to, June did. It rained rather hard for part of the time we were inside, but it was dry by the time we finished. After our meal we had just enough time to find a couple of caches before returning to the bus for the long drive back to Dublin.
Tomorrow we will see the Book of Kell’s, attend June’s event cache, pack, and spend our last night in Ireland, then Wednesday we fly to Vienna where we have an airbnb with David and Dave.
No comments:
Post a Comment