After our second bus tour within the first week, we were pros at sightseeing in Ireland. The weather is pretty similar to Washington in that it is cold and wet a lot of the time. The difference is, a lot of times, you can wait out the rain. We were blessed with a super sunny day apart from a mid-day rainstorm that lasted maybe 10 minutes.
Our first stop was the Dark Hedges. They're a massive row of beech trees that have been growing for over 200 years. They've been growing so freely that they now twist into each other in the upper branches. They're one of the most frequently photographed places of Ireland and is seen in Game of Thrones Season 2 Episode 1. Unfortunately the path was incredibly busy so I couldn't get a great picture but this shot shows the twisting of the branches really well so at least I got one good one.
Our next stop on the trip was one of the scariest things I've done since I hate heights - we crossed the Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge. It's about a 1km walk from the parking lot to the bridge and it's incredibly steep so it was great and easy to get down there but getting back to the bus was quite the hike. The bridge sits 30 meters above the sea. For over 350 years, fishermen strung a rope bridge over this gap between the islands to catch migrating salmon. The story is that word got out among the salmon population that fish were disappearing when they migrated along this route so eventually the salmon stopped coming. Now the bridge has become a permanent steel rope bridge that thousands of visitors cross per year.
Our third stop on the tour was the Giant's Causeway.
Giant's Causeway is on the far northern coast of Ireland. On the bus ride there we could see the outline of the coast of Scotland in the distance. The Causeway is a 60 million year old lava rock formation. The basalt columns are incredibly uniform hexagons that interlock. The pictures can only do so much justice to this amazing natural formation. The Giant's Causeway got it's name from a much less natural story however;
The Giant Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhail) was the biggest giant in all of Ireland. He hears of a giant in Scotland named Benandonner who everyone claims is bigger than McCool. Finn decides to make a bridge to make his way to Scotland, tearing of chunks of the coast and throwing them into the water (creating Giant's Causeway). About halfway there, Finn sees Benandonner through the mist on the shore of Scotland and he is absolutely huge. Finn stops building his road and goes home to tell his wife. Benandonner hears that Finn was coming to Scotland to fight him and makes his way to Ireland to finish the fight. Finn's wife comes up with a plan, the McCools build a giant baby cradle and Mrs. McCool disguises Finn as a baby. When Benandonner gets to the door and asks for Finn, his wife tells Benandonner that Finn is out in the fields working, but he is welcome to come inside and wait. When Benandonner sees the size of the "baby" he realizes the father must be ten times the size and says he needs to go and returns to Scotland.
Apparently there are many versions of the story but this is the version our tour driver told us. As we pulled up to the Causeway, a massive rainstorm started. We all took shelter in the lobby of a hotel that was next to us. We debated how long we were going to wait before sucking it up and going down to the Causeway. I went to the bathroom, came back and the rain had stopped and the sun was shining. It was amazing how quickly the weather switched, and, lucky for us, it didn't start raining again until we were stepping on the bus to go home from our last stop.
Our last stop was Dunluce Castle. Pieces of the castle have been rebuilt throughout its hundreds of years standing but the earliest standing remains date to around 1500.
The Irish MacQuillans were ousted by a Scottish family, the MacDonnells around 1550 where they quickly became the dominant family in the area, creating conflict with the surrounding families.
The English crown soon became concerned with the growing power of the MacDonnells and sent the Lord Deputy of Ireland to take care of the threat. He sucessfully took Dunluce back but the castle was granted back to a MacDonell in 1586.
It switched ownership many times before landing with the MacDonells for a final time in 1665, shortly before they moved their main residence to another nearby castle, and Dunluce castle gradually fell to ruins.
The castle came into state guardianship in 1928.
The ruins were marked along the way with signs stating what each part of the ruins would have been, with a groundplan of what they might have looked like in its height.
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