Day 3: Dublin to Buncrana

Giant’s Causeway!

On Monday, yesterday, we picked up our car early at the airport and also met my daughter Erin as she arrived in from Canada. This was a change to our plan, but things came together quite seamlessly, and the three of us spent the day driving up through Northern Ireland and onwards to Buncrana.

Of course, being in Ireland you have to drive on the opposite side of the road. I’ve done this quite a few times over the years in various countries, so even jetlagged and tired things thankfully came back to me fairly quickly. But I had to really focus at some points with multiple roundabouts, heavy traffic areas and rain making things interesting.

We decided to stay off the major highways as much as possible so that we could enjoy the countryside at a more gentle pace. This worked part of the time, but other times we transferred to the local highways in order to keep our forward progress. There were lots of roundabouts and pretty countryside, but because I was driving I have no pictures from those parts of the drive. At one point we did stop for a snack and there was a beautiful little church just across the street surrounded by flowers. After a brief rest and a really good shortbread cookie, we were again on our way into Northern Ireland.

We stopped in a beautiful little town close to the northern coastline, just 9 miles from the Causeway.

We found a nice little café for our lunch just as the weather began to kick up.

From there, we drove the short distance out to the north coast where we found that a pre-reserved time slot was required to see the exhibit. It was very pricey, and after a quick discussion with the parking attendant, he told us where we could park for a much reduced fee and simply walk into the designated Area of Natural Beauty. And this was what we ended up doing. I had waited over 40 years to see this site, and I wasn’t going to let a simple ticket technicality keep me away from it.😎

The wind was beginning to whip up and some light rain began to fall. So we put on our rain gear and set off on the walk down the cliffs. It’s difficult to know if it would be better to see this area in the sunshine or in a stormy situation. Clearly the latter was what we experienced and it was pretty cool. However, I might like to return and experience this beautiful setting in the sunshine.

The Giant’s Causeway, a World Heritage site, is made up of some 40,000 large hexagonal, basaltic columns that were formed during an ancient volcano. The legend of the Causeway is that it was used by Giants to cross from Ireland to Scotland. Apparently, on a clear day you can see Scotland in the distance, but of course we didn’t have that type of day.

As I neared the end of the Causeway I met a naturalist who was keeping an eye on people not getting too close to the edge. The rain was making the basalt very slippery and the waves were building. We talked about the formation and he was really pleased to hear that there are similar formations in the Whistler area of BC. The same formation with narrower columns, which I’ve seen on hikes a number of times. He said he often gets asked by visiting Canadians about possible formations in Canada, and until now he had no answer for them. We also discussed the famous Led Zeppelin album cover that was created at this site. He told me that it was made from a series of still photographs taken in different locations on the causeway. It was a decent conversation.

We drove onwards through some often nasty weather to Buncrana and enjoyed a nice reunion with the Taplin family. After dinner we drove to our accommodation, a beautiful home owned by Paul’s cousin with an even better view from the hill above town.

Still dealing with jet lag and after a 9 hour road trip I was pretty much done. It was great to crawl into bed!

Geoff