The Land of Giants

We set our alarm this morning so that we could go see Giant’s Causeway before the influx of tourists. We had read that the day tours from Belfast or Dublin start arriving around 11am, so we wanted to make sure we had seen the bulk of it by then. As it turns out, this may not have been necessary. Despite being perhaps the most popular tourist site in Northern Ireland, we encountered a grand total of less than 20 people from start to finish. The parking situation was a bit confusing, which I had read about online ahead of time. The National Trust built a visitor’s centre at the entrance to the Giant’s Causeway and charge some crazy fee for people to go into the Visitor’s Center. The Giant’s Causeway itself is free, and a gentleman from the National Trust handed us a brochure as we drove in telling us just that. The problem is that they will strongly try and encourage you to pay and insinuate that paying the fee is required to park, but it is not . . .   Anyway, after our free parking, we walked down the hill to the first point of interest — the Grand Causeway. This is perhaps the most recognizable part of the causeway as it has the strange rock formations that you’ve probably seen in someone else’s pictures. It is quite bizarre to see in person because they are so perfectly shaped that it is like the National Trust smoothed the rocks out to create a perfect walking path out onto the formations. Shockingly, all of the formations are naturally formed (so they tell me). Initially it was just Nicole, myself, and 2-3 other people walking around. After a few minutes, a bus arrived and a large family of Chinese tourists disembarked. We took that as our queue to continue on the path to a quieter area. The path continued by some other rock formations before ascending agressively up the side of a cliff and after 160-something steps, we reached the top of the cliffs and made our way back to the car park. It is a smaller area than I would have expected, but this made it easier to explore in its entirety.  

 After leaving the causeway, we drove to a place called “The Dark Hedges.” It is essentially a road flanked on both sides by ominous looking trees. It has been used in various movies and tv shows, and is now closed off to vehicle traffic. This didn’t necessarily stop some tourists from ignoring this rule, but after we parked next to a nearby Inn and walked in, we found it mostly empty. This was somewhat surprising to us because in the Instagram day and age, the site is primed for folks taking dramatic selfies with the overhanging trees. Perhaps the timing of our visit in the middle of winter has been helping us on this leg of the trip thusfar.

After getting back in the car, we drove to Dunluce Castle, or the ruins of the castle at least. I had seen some pictures of it online and thought it looked interesting because the ruins of the caslte are perched on the side of a cliff next to the ocean. To go inside the castle (or what remains of it) required the purchase of a ticket, which we didn’t find necessary. We walked on the outside and along paths that went up and down the coast and that was more than enough. There was a small building next to the carpark that would normally have had tea and scones, but it was unfortunately closed. I was very much looking forward to tea and scones, so we made it our next mission to acquire these items.  

We returned back to the town of Bushmills, and after some deliberation, decided to get tea and scones at our own Inn. They were quite sizable and delicious, so I think we made a good decision. It was now after 3pm, however, and the last tour of the Bushmills distillery was at 330pm, so we rushed over to get in before it closed. Bushmills is the oldest distillery in the world, and every bottle of Bushmills comes from this distillery. We went on the tour of the facility. It was full of interesting odors and temperature variations. Our guide explained the whole process, but I’ve already forgotten most of it. I wouldn’t normally seek out a whiskey as my drink-of-choice, so explanations of one whiskey versus another didn’t really resonate because I don’t have the palate to recognize the difference. As expected, the end of the tour came with some samples of whiskey. We had Redbush, Original, and 12-year. While there were some discernible differences, I don’t think I could justify buying the much more expensive aged barrel batches over the most basic variant. And that’s all I know about whiskey. We staggered back to the Inn for dinner by the fire and called it a night.