A Giant's Playground - the Causeway coast

April 10, 2013

A Giant's Playground - the Causeway coast

After our visit to Newgrange, we drove north into northern Ireland (no signs saying you are entering Northern Ireland - you just start to notice orangeish rear license plates). Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, northern Irelnad), and for many years site of much of the bombings, etc. of the Troubles.

We are staying for two nights at Valley View Bed and breakfast, in a country location a few km from Bushmills, and the Giant's Causeway. Valerie is the proprietor, and is so fun, energetic, talkative, and very helpful. We had dinner at one of her recommended restaurants, the Porthole at the Bayview Hotel in Portballintrae - grabbed the early bird special - we both had a delicious Panang Curry and shared a scrumptious banoffee pie for dessert (the delicious desserts were a fairly consistent theme, thus the need for diets for Don and Donna upon returning home). Beautiful view of the harbor from our table.

Morning brings us to March 21, and Don and Donna's 32nd "meeting" anniversary - as we met at a party on March 21, 1981! We met a young couple at breakfast from southern California - Tony and Lisa - Tony was a producer with a videogame company called Blizzard, and he was on a world wide tour rolling out a new game.

We had read about a great coastal walk along the Giant's Causeway coast, and then Valerie suggested the walk as well, and offered to call a taxi to meet us at a car park at Dunsverick Castle ruin - the cab picked us up and drove us back to the Giant's Causeway visitor center (which we skipped, saving over $20 - a recommendation of Valeries). The Giant's Causeway is a unique area of six sided volcanic formed rock, and is a UNESCO Natural World Heritage area. It was a partly cloudy day with very strong winds and cold for our hike, but boy did we love it, even though it seemed like a few times we were going to be blown into the sea! Great scenery - a really fun way to take in the Giants Causeway area. Since we were on top of the cliff, we had to hike down the Shepherd's Steps to get to the National Park part of the Causeway. On the Steps, a young couple (Duane and Kelly) asked Donna if she would take their photo. We found out they were from Edgewater, CO and that Duane works at Belleview and Federal at a roofing company, all of about a mile or so from our house in Littleton. At the top of a ridge we met Kirstin (our daughter is Kirsten), a 46 year old German High School Latin teacher (Latin is another theme of the trip - read more in upcoming posts). We met Kirstin again later that night at our restaurant (and this was in a different town about 5 or 6 miles away, so fairly amazing that she ended up at the same place).

After the invigorating 3 hour or so hike, we stopped at Bonmargy Friary ruin dating back to 1500 (not all that old by Ireland ruin standards, but nice). Then we drove the Torr Head drive, starting at Cushendun, a pretty seaside village known for its Cornish style cottages. The Torr Head road was barely over one lane - at Torr Head, there was a parking area, and hiked to the site of an abandoned coast guard center, built in 1822, and abandoned in the 1920's. It was blowing even harder here, and we really felt like we were going to fly away in the wind to Scotland, which is at its closest point to Ireland at Torr Head, only 19 km (about 14 miles) away.

Off to Portrush, where we ate at 55 degrees North restaurant, with floor to ceiling 2 story windows looking out at the sea. Wonderful salmon dinner with Cheese cake for dessert (let the waistline growing begin!)

Let's see some pics from the Giants Causeway area.