One day adventure through Northern Ireland

Even though I am trying to keep up the tempo of at least two blog posts per month, there is time where this seems impossible. A bit of travelling, a bit of family visiting and a bit more of work, and that’s it, hobby has to suffer.

However, stubborn as I am, I’ve decided to have two blog posts this month! 🙂

As mentioned, my mom and dad were here, and I took a good care of them. At least I think I did. 🙂 But, I will not write about their visit, just about our trip to the Northern Ireland.

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Of course, we took them to the pub on the very first evening of their arrival, but let’s stick to the story planed here. 🙂

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On Saturday morning, day after my 35th birthday (Yeah yeah… got old.), we were on the way to Giant’s Causeway. Almost three hours ride through Northern Ireland was long enough to hear various stories about this part of the island.

For example, our first destination was Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which is a bridge that takes you off the Irish island to a small Carrick island and it is made of ropes. It is 20 meters long and 30 meters high, and it can hold up to 8 pedestrians at the same time. According to a legend the first bridge was built 350 years ago and it is being built and rebuilt since that time. Original reason why it is there is to help local fishermen to get to a better position to sale from where they are sailing into salmon catch. It’s not used by fishermen any more and it is mainly a touristy destination, and traversing it costs some money.

Parking spot is exactly one kilometre away from the rope bridge, so you need to walk about 10-15 minutes. Along the way there’s a beautiful scenery and a magnificent view towards Scotland that is just 20-30 minutes away by boat.

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Well, it takes 15 minutes since half of the way is made of stairs only.

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As you are getting closer you are more and more aware that you will cross over a rocks deep bellow and since it is made of ropes, walking on this bridge might be a bit shaky. Well, it depends who is in group with you, since some people enjoy jumping over it instead of walking peacefully. 🙂

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On the other side, there is a small Carrick island, where there is absolutely nothing. Well OK, as mentioned, the view is magnificent. Whether you are looking towards Scotland, or towards the Irish coast, you can see the huge cliffs and clear blue ocean bellow you.

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If you take alternative route on the way back, at one certain spot you can actually see how deep the “trench” is below the bridge. Apparently, not a single tourist got hurt ever on this bridge, but there were situations where tourist refused to return back across it, so they needed special rides with boats or even helicopters. 🙂 If you are afraid of heights, you should re-consider your trip to Carrick island.

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After the bridge and a short lunch break with local Irish food we arrived to our main destination – Giant’s Causeway.

It is a nature masterpiece in which lava was cooled down quickly and it formed more or less hexagonal pillars stacked on top of one another along the cost. There is an urban legend that it was actually “man made”. Yeah, legend says that there was a giant Fionn on the Irish side, and Benandonner on the Scottish side, and they were teasing one another across the sea. However one day, Fionn was in need to prove to Ben that he is bigger, smarter and stronger, so he has built a causeway to get to Scotland. When he got there, he figured out that Ben is much bigger and potentially stronger and he hid back in Ireland. To make the story short, Ben came across, got scared by Fionn’s trick and he ran away to Scotland. As he was running fast he ruined the causeway and those are just leftovers that were once connecting two coasts.

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If you believe in this story, take a closer look to a previous photo. If you can see the smoke coming out from two small chimneys, Fionn is at home. You’ll notice that in English it is spelled “Finn” not “Fionn”. 🙂

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Anyways, when we were there, Fionn was absent, so we had no reasons to worry about and we took our time to take a walk around the place, and to climb some of the stones.

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Even though Giant’s Causeway is really a place to see when you are visiting Ireland, you might be interested in one other place on the planet. If you are reading about Giant’s Causeway, most of the sites will point out that it is UNESCO world heritage site, “one of a kind” and you might have a feeling that you can see it only in Ireland. Well, that is only partially true. There’s a similar place in Croatia, called “Rupnica”. It is formed in a very same way as Giant’s Causeway except that our Panonian sea leaked away, so it is not a coast but it’s in the middle of the woods. 🙂

If Ireland is to far away for your budged, try to visit Croatian Causeway! 🙂

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After this we headed back to Belfast, but since a very famous castle ruin is just a few miles away, it was an opportunity to stop there and take a few photos. On the way there we passed through Bushmills village, and I’d rather stop here for Whiskey tasting, but we were just passengers in a bus, and we just passed through the place.

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And then we stopped a few minutes to take a photo of Dunluce Castle. Dunluce Castle became world famous since some parts of the Games of Thrones were filmed here.

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Since we did not watch the mentioned series, it is just a nice old ruin for us, still worth seeing. On the way back we stopped for an hour and a half in Belfast. It was just enough to walk through the pedestrian zone in city center, see the city council and some centrally located buildings.

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Walking around Belfast we ended up in Victoria Square shopping center in Belfast, that is just amazing. In the center of the building there is a futuristic plateau that is covered by glass dome and gives you the great 360 view of Belfast.

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Belfast is really a beautiful place, and it is quite sad that it’s mostly known because of the bombings and sufferings. If you go for “second best”, then again, it is known as a place where Titanic was built, and there are still Samson and Goliath, two cranes that were used to build that great ship, but we all know how Titanic ended.

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Still, one hour and thirty minutes is not enough to talk more about Belfast, but it’s just a nice intro in some future weekend there. Maybe in July you’ll be able to read more about Belfast on my Blog.

So, keep returning here! 🙂

Till the next writings…

Love

Balky

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