Northern Ireland - North Coast

I stayed 4 nights with my old geocaching buddy, Batsgonemad and his Squirrel, from Durban, now living in Portsteward on the Northern Coast. Bats used to be a crime scene photographer for the SAP, but has now turned his skills towards children's photography, each with their own pros and cons.

Bats was kind enough to take me geocaching for 2 days in his Postman Pat mobileto see the sights. Sadly the first day was rained out before lunch, and all I could see at the viewpoints was mist, so we retired to play First to Find for the rest of the day and to admire his geocoin collection!

Here is the Musenden Temple, a lovely little temple perched right on the cliff edge. It's empty inside, and a great place to shelter from the rain. If anyone wants to know the history of this buidling, look it up yourselves, you lazy fiends!

Bats and I in Portrush harbour.

Good place for a jump!

The white cliffs of Portrush. There is a elephant in their somewhere and a giant's head.

Dunluce castle. Here I was accosted by an old dear called Doreen, who after 3 minutes of chatting over the sign board insisted on pulling me in for a massive farewell kiss! That crazy lady!
The kitchen of the castle collapsed into the sea, and the info boards have wonderful details illustrations ofthe kitchen collapsing, along with a few servants and the local dog!

The Giants Causeway - some fascinating hexagonal stone colums rising from the sea (40 000 of them) , forming many interesting shaps and patterns. I was keen to come here when I visited Ireland 5 years ago, but didn't have time, so was glad to make it here at last.

Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhail) an Irish Giant lived on an Antrim headland and one day when going about his daily business a Scottish Giant named Fingal began to shout insults and hurl abuse from across the channel. In anger Finn lifted a clod of earth and threw it at the giant as a challenge, the earth landed in the sea.
Fingal retaliated with a rock thrown back at Finn and shouted that Finn was lucky that he wasn't a strong swimmer or he would have made sure he could never fight again.
Finn was enraged and began lifting huge clumps of earth from the shore, throwing them so as to make a pathway for the Scottish giant to come and face him. However by the time he finished making the crossing he had not slept for a week and so instead devised a cunning plan to fool the Scot.
Finn diguised himself as a baby in a cot and when his adversary came to face him Finn's wife told the Giant that Finn was away but showed him his son sleeping in the cradle. The Scottish giant became apprehensive, for if the son was so huge, what size would the father be?
In his haste to escape Fingal sped back along the causeway Finn had built, tearing it up as he went. He is said to have fled to a cave on Staffa which is to this day named 'Fingal's Cave'.

I aint scared of no giants!

Some of the longer columns.

The famous Carrick-a-rede rope bridge. Fisherman would cast a rope bridge over to this island every summer centuries ago, as the fishing from this small island was pretty good. Nowadays, no fishing going on, but the bridge is still only up in the summer, for droves of tourists to walk across.
Nat as exciting as I had hoped, but the island was great - very soft spongy grass and lots of birds, but not too much time to linger unfortunately - a picnic would have been nice!

Sheep Island - if my memory serves me correctly.

Drive by viewpoint. Nearby in Ballycastle is a great coffee shop with the best hot chocolate. In addition to a mini-flake, the hot choccy comes with 45 mini-marshmallows! Dangerous! Although I think the number of marshmallows depends on how much the serving lass likes you, as second visit the new lass only gave me 25 :o(
Dried seaweed is also a traditional takeaway snack in the area!

On top of Fair Head, and perhaps my favourite spot of the whole trip. A lovely walk over farmlands, to the top of a 180m high vertical sliff with spectacular views. (Rathlin Island is visible on top right of pic). We met some lasses doing a 3 days hike along the cliffs for the Duke of Ediburgh challenge. I would love to do that hike sometime - especially with irish lasses!

Fair Head got its name from the tale of a beautiful fair-headed girl who once lived in a castle on Rathlin Island. She had many suitors, leading to a fight between two of them. One was mortally wounded and, as he lay dying, whispered to his servant to dance with the girl on the cliffs below the castle. The faithful servant obeyed, and danced nearer and nearer the edge of the cliff until they both fell over and died. The spot on the mainland where the girl’s body was washed up was from then on known as ‘Fairhead’