Giant's Causeway

---

Wednesday October 17 - Today we went to the Giant’s Causeway. It’s a large area of interlocking basalt columns that date to about 60 million years ago, formed from a volcanic eruption. The columns are large and hexagonal, which looks really cool. We decided to do a five mile coastal hike to get there. We parked at the ruins of Dunseverick Castle and hiked in. The hike was beautiful, but it was a little cold and got windy at times. The weather was a little nuts - cold, windy, rainy, hot, sunny...We thought it would take 2-3 hours to get there, based on what our host told us, but it was more like 90 minutes. It was quite cloudy when we got there, and it almost just started to rain, but then it cleared up quite nicely as we waited. There were a lot of people there, but apparently that is true no matter what time you arrive. If you park on-site, you need to pay something like 10 pounds to visit, including the interactive center. We were not interested, and the site itself is free, which is great. We walked on the columns, took pictures, ate some chips, and enjoyed the view.

Once we had finished, we started to walk to the main road, but saw The Nook, a pub I had read about. We decided to go in to see about food, but I was unimpressed. It was also quite late for lunch but too early for dinner, so we decided to get scones, since we hadn’t had any on this trip yet. We sat, waiting for our order, and then we heard a woman from the back saying they were all out of all types of scones. She did come talk to us and ask if we wanted something else. There were cakes that looked good, but they were twice the price, and didn’t seem worth it. But she said they would just substitute them for the same price, so we went for it. Jeroen ordered a chocolate cake and I ordered carrot cake and we split them. Both were enormous and super full of sugar and delicious, and help to explain why people from the UK look a lot like people from the US these days.

When we were good and full, we planned to either walk the main road back or take the bus. From what I had seen of the bus times, we may as well start walking, but then we were passed by two buses along the way. It took us 45 minutes, but it was worth it as we saw some fun things, like rainbow-colored sheep. And we burned off *some* of those cake calories.



For dinner, we weren’t quite as hungry after those cakes as we’d planned, so we stopped at the local Spar grocery and ordered a 12 inch sub to split. Amazing how much you could pack into it. Don’t worry - we had chips also.

---