We actually had a mostly sunny beautiful day today, which was great because we were outdoors most of the time. The bad part was that this was the start of a 3-day holiday and the other tourists were out in force at the two popular places we visited.
We drove ENE to the Northern Ireland coast to walk across a rope bridge. The literature made it seem scary, and it probably was 100 or more years ago, but it is totally stable now, and really pretty short. On the way to the bridge, we passed more of the countryside and another castle.
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| Countryside with headlands in the backround. |
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| Next 4 photos are the ruined castle. |
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| Looking back at the village of Carrick-A-Rede |
The bridge was first built a couple hundred years ago to help salmon fisherman get to an island with great fishing. The Carrick-A-Rede bridge is now BIG tourist business. Holly warned us that after our 1k walk to the bridge, we might have to wait for 8 or 10 people ahead of us to cross first. Instead, there was a line of 40 or more that just got worse, because the people who had crossed earlier and explored the little island now were ready to come back. It looked like the park staff were allowing 10 to 15 minutes in each direction or until the line was gone.
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All those little dots on the middle land mass are people
who have crossed the bridge and are milling around. |
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Looking away from the bridge. It was breezy and chilly and
I was glad to have a way to protect my ears. |
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You can see the long line snaking toward the bridge. The
people at the back land mass are on the island. |
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The line we faced. On the other side of the little building
is the line of folks returning. |
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The bridge is only about 65 feet long and although it is
100 feet up, you really don't focus on the height because
it is so short. See the guy on the right taking a photo while
other visitors wait. |
The bridge was fun, but even knowing there were long lines in each direction, people were stopping and posing for pictures of taking dozens of shots on the way over with their selfie sticks. The scary part for me was the rocky muddy path up to the top of the island. Jim walked around and took pictures and then we headed back, just missing the next return, and were first in line 15 minutes later to get back to the mainland and the bus.
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| About to cross |
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| Looking down |
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| Above and below: views from the island |
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| Waiting out the incoming crowd to get back. |
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| The walk we took along the coast and back. |
We had lunch at a local hotel right next to the entrance of the Giants Causeway, a place of hexagonal basalt pillars. The story is that a giant in Ireland and one in Scotland wanted to fight each other and used the stones as a bridge. There is a vee-shaped formation of these stones that are short enough to walk on that protrude into the sea towards Scotland, which you can see from here.
We walked down to the main area, which, again, was overloaded with people enjoying the holiday and wonderful weather and scrambled across some of the rocks before deciding to head back a little early. We were pretty amazed that people were allowed to crawl all over this UNESCO site!
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| It doesn't look too special at this point. |
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| But from here on, the shapes are evident. |
When we arrived back in Derry, we took a short break, then set out to walk around the rest of the wall that we had missed yesterday.
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Austin's - a department store that started
in the 1860's. It looked very closed. |
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Me in front of one of the churches on the
wall. The spire was originally lead-clad wood
but they rebuilt it in stone and used the
lead for bullets. |
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