Hello everyone! Well, last week I promised you a visit to one of County Antrim’s most famous landmarks… And here we are! Plunkett is especially excited – this attraction does have a very geological slant.
He’s just spotted it there in the distance… The Giant’s Causeway! Time to rush over for a closer peek.
“Look at these basalt columns, Paddy! Incredible!”
Normally Paddy is left stony-faced by Plunkett’s enthusiasm for rocks, but even he has to admit that this is pretty cool.
Even more so when he hears about how they got here. Volcanoes are always awesome, even if they happened 60 million years ago! And this is just the beginning.
As you get closer to the sea, the grass and plants disappear and you can see the hexagonal stone columns all the more clearly. The Giant’s Causeway is made up of more than 40,000 of these hexagons, neatly stacked together!
And while Plunkett admires the stones, Paddy has been learning about how this place got its name. It turns out there are lots of myths and legends about the Giant’s Causeway! Early people apparently had a lot of fun figuring out how the stones came to look this way.
The most popular story, and the one I learned as a child, is that local giant Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhaill in Irish, and you’ll come across lots of alternative spellings that fall somewhere in between the two as well) had an ongoing rivalry with another giant who lived across the water in Scotland. After a few rounds of long distance name-calling and threats, Finn decided to kick things up a gear, and he built a series of stepping stones – the Giant’s Causeway – so he could cross the sea and challenge Benandonner, the Scottish giant, to a physical fight.
Unfortunately, the downside of exchanging insults across a stretch of ocean is that it makes it tricky to gauge the size and strength of your opponent. Once in Scotland, Finn discovered that Benandonner was a good bit bigger than he’d expected. Oh well, never mind. There was still time to leg it back across the causeway, breaking it up on the way so that Benandonner couldn’t follow him. Right?
Nope.
Benandonner spotted Finn, and started chasing him home. And Finn would have taken a giant-sized beating, had he not been married to a smart lady called Oonagh. She had the genius idea of wrapping her big-mouth husband in blankets, and popping him in an oversized crib – which she’d apparently been keeping in the house for just this sort of eventuality. When Benandonner showed up at the door, she invited him in, and introduced him to her sweet little baby boy. Thinking that Finn in disguise was his rival’s son, and in that case that he was the one who would most likely come up short in a fight, Benandonner turned tail and ran. Nice one, Oonagh!
Fortunately, the boys didn’t see any warring giants on the day they visited.
And yes, you are allowed to walk on the stones! The lads took full advantage of that.
“Nearly there, Plunkett!”
“Aaaaah! It’s actually quite comfortable up here.”
Then there was just time to grab a couple more photos…
… Before heading off.
“Come on Paddy, we don’t want to miss our train home!”
Made it! And with seconds to spare!
See you all next time!
Beastie Travel Guide
Access to the Giant’s Causeway World Heritage Site is free, as long as you arrive on foot. If you drive there, expect to pay a hefty fee to park your car in the Visitor Centre car park! The Giant’s Causeway & Bushmills Railway train takes about half an hour to travel from Bushmills to near the Causeway. That means you can sit back and enjoy the scenery… And sneakily avoid paying for parking by using their free car park at the Bushmills station.
This fearsome-looking beast is the Massereene Wolfhound, and he was a handy pooch to have around back in the days when wolves still roamed free on the island of Ireland. In life, the hound saved Lady Marion Clotworthy when she was cornered by a pack of wolves on the shores of Antrim Bay. And having got a taste for heroics, he subsequently alerted the castle’s residents to an advancing party of human attackers, allowing them to mount defences and save themselves and their home.
“Aaaah, lovely. Welcome to Bushmills, Beastie friends!”
That’d be the River Bush, supposedly one of the best salmon fishing rivers in Ireland.
It’s one of over 80 listed buildings in the town, although I reckon the boys’ interests are more gastronomic than architectural. They tell me it does a very good Sunday carvery lunch, and then there’s that very tempting garden.
The 
Fortunately, they didn’t consume too many free samples, and they were able to round off their day with a nice stroll along Castlerock Beach. Just as well, because this is a big beach! You can’t tell as you approach it over the dunes…
… But it’s really huge!
Antrim’s north coast is famous for its beautiful sandy beaches, and like Downhill Beach…
… Humans can bring their cars right down onto the sand.
And that unusual little building on the headland? That’s Mussenden Temple, a private library built by the 4th Earl of Bristol in memory of his cousin. Am I the only one would would LOVE a private library with a view like this?
Night night, lads!
“Look, Plunkett! I think there might be another staycation in the pipeline. Shall we?”
“If we climb into the knitting bag, we’ll get to travel in the car, not the boot. Then we can look out the window all the way to our destination… Wherever that might be!”
“If we end up in an escape-proof prisoner of war camp, Paddy, I’m holding you responsible!”
“There! What did I tell you? Floor-to-ceiling windows, soft carpeting under our paws… And the humans will never spot us back here!”
“… Is this a castle?”
You wouldn’t mind being locked in here though. Look at these beautiful gardens!
The locals seem friendly too… And it looks like there might be a happy event in the not-too-distant future!
Huh. I always wondered where new scarecrows came from – I guess we know now!
Good spooky picture, too! So, it wasn’t long before Explorer Beastie was back to his usual carefree self.
And what’s Explorer Beastie looking at so intensely in the second picture? Well, he’s trying to find Gobbinsite, a mineral that was discovered right here in this very area. Deposits have subsquently popped up all over the globe, but it still retains the name of the place where it was seen first. What someone should probably tell Explorer Beastie is that Gobbinsite is one of a group of minerals that all look very similar, and can only be differentiated by looking at the crystals under a microscope… But the promise of poking around some Beastie-sized caves should probably distract him nicely from that small technicality!
In the picture on the top right, you can also see the remains of part of the old path, which hugged the cliff line much more closely than the current one. But the most striking part of the walk is just around the next corner – the impressive Tubular Bridge!
See you again soon, lads!
