Yesterday the weather gods decided they'd given us enough good weather. We arrived in Belfast to a cold rain and wind. Our tour took us to the Giant's Causeway, about an hour's bus ride away. The causeway is a structure of thousands of basalt columns stretching out from the shore. There's a scientific explanation for its existence, but we prefer the Irish legend. As the story goes the giant Finn McCool lived in this place with his wife Oonagh and child Ossian. He heard of a giant named Bennandonner in Scotland that he decided he wanted to meet. Finn built the causeway from stone so that he could cross the sea to meet his rival without getting his feet wet and because there were no boats large enough for a giant. Without going into the whole story, Finn later destroyed the Scottish end of the causeway so that his rival couldn't come over to Ireland to attack him.
When we arrived at the place, the rain did stop for a few minutes and we were able to go down to the shore to see the columns and they were quite amazing. After a nice lunch, we rode through torrents of rain along the coast and had a view of the ruins of Dunluce Castle and the limestone and flint cliffs. The countryside looked beautiful despite the rain and we could certainly see why Ireland is called the Emerald Isle.
Today we're cruising down the Irish Sea and eventually around Land's End enroute to Southampton and the end of our journey. We've opted to take the trip to Stonehenge on our way to Heathrow so we do have one more place of interest to see.
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