Rick Steves' Snapshot Northern Ireland by Rick Steves & Pat O’Connor

Author:Rick Steves & Pat O’Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avalon Travel
Published: 2013-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sights on the Antrim Coast

▲▲Giant’s Causeway

This five-mile-long stretch of coastline, a World Heritage Site, is famous for its bizarre basalt columns. The shore is covered with largely hexagonal pillars that stick up at various heights. It’s as if the earth were offering God his choice of 37,000 six-sided cigarettes.

Geologists claim the Giant’s Causeway was formed by volcanic eruptions more than 60 million years ago. As the surface of the lava flow quickly cooled, it contracted and crystallized into columns (resembling the caked mud at the bottom of a dried-up lakebed, but with deeper cracks). As the rock later settled and eroded, the columns broke off into the many stair-like steps that now honeycomb the Antrim Coast.

Of course, in actuality, the Giant’s Causeway was made by a giant Ulster warrior named Finn MacCool who knew of a rival giant living on the Scottish island of Staffa. Finn built a stone bridge over to Staffa to spy on his rival, and found out that the Scottish giant was much bigger. Finn retreated back to Ireland and had his wife dress him as a sleeping infant, just in time for the rival giant to come across the causeway to spy on Finn. The rival, shocked at the infant’s size, fled back to Scotland in terror of whomever had sired this giant baby. Breathing a sigh of relief, Finn tore off the baby clothes and prudently knocked down the bridge. Today, proof of this encounter exists in the geologic formation that still extends undersea and surfaces at Staffa.

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