I spend just two nights in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This is the absolute minimum I try to do in a place, to get at least one full day to explore, baggage free.
For me, it feels like the real start of the trip.
I did spend a few days in Edinburgh with K before heading to Ireland – go properly inside Edinburgh Castle this time, see the first annual tartan parade, visit one of the National Galleries (decidedly not the Portrait one), dance in a ceilidh (country bush dancing but Scottish; and just one because I have my backpack with my camera and everything so it’s a bit awkward). We also spend a day in Pentland Hills, doing the 5 Hills track, where we go up and over each little peak. It’s a good time, but I’ve been to Edinburgh before, and I don’t have to sort as much since I stay with K while I’m there. Though I do some of the touristy things I missed last time, it feels more social. But then me and my backpack are on a comically short flight (it’s not even a full hour and it seems that as soon as we’ve finished the take-off procedures, they’re closing the toilets and getting ready for landing), and things really begin.
Belfast is a pleasant surprise, lots of street art to enjoy. I walk the river and see a giant fish sculpture too, and some Game of Thrones stain glass tributes.
But the big event for me, the plan for my luggage-free day, is to visit the Giant’s Causeway.
This is a UNESCO site – sometimes I think you can’t move for UNESCO sites; they seem to be everywhere.
I take a local bus, waiting to go slightly later in the day so I can pick up a day pass that is cheaper than buying a single one-way ticket directly on the bus. Totally worth the delay as it also lets me catch the bus for tiny hops along the coastline to see some other sights.
It’s a beautiful bus ride, everything lush and green. And so, so sunny. For the next two, maybe three weeks, it’s all anyone is going to talk about.
“You’re so lucky to be here now,” locals tell me during random interactions. With me, with each other, every single day, I hear someone remark on how wonderful the weather is. I, in fact, think it’s following me. I’ve had a recent streak of avoiding rain and storms, in France, and then in the UK. But I both like and need the cold, so I feel like I’ve been granted someone else’s wish – except I’ve managed to do every walk I’ve wanted to take for weeks (and the streak will keep going too, though I don’t know that yet in Northern Ireland). Every forecasted storm I’m worried I won’t be able to outpace, or rain I commit to just walking in arrives later or in a different area to me. And not having to walk in wet clothes… maybe it was my wish after all.
This is the first day I get sunburnt. I put on sunscreen at the start of the day, and reapplied – but too late. I get sunburnt a few more times in the UK (always too slow in remembering to reapply), with no peeling at all. In my whole life, I don’t think I’ve ever been as tan as these weeks in the UK have made me. Hilarious irony for the place of proverbially endless rain.
The public bus stop is maybe an extra minute away from where the tour buses stop, and then it’s pretty easy to follow along with about a hundred other people down to the beach. I started with the Blue route, the most classic option, which follows along an access road and a nice, slightly rugged coastline. From here, you can look out and see Scotland across the water.
The main event is the large formation of hexagonal rocks.
We all climb over them, everyone looking for the perfect spot for their selfie or their picnic lunch. Generally, everyone is here because they’ve seen pictures of it before. That’s good and helpful in a way – the internet has blown the travel world wide open, and any travel (but I think especially solo travel) is nowhere near as difficult as it has been in the past.
But it also means that you have to intentionally look at things with fresh eyes. Some places are overwhelming in person (like the Cliffs of Étretat, for example) and so it’s a little easier, but other places you go and – yep, it looks just like the picture. And then you take a picture exactly like the one you saw online, and that could be your whole visit if you let it.
Actually though, it’s pretty weird and amazing if you think about it. The first bit that got me is how properly hexagonal the rocks are.
To me, hexagons don’t feel like a shape that should form naturally in nature, even with the knowledge that honeycomb exists. I looked it up while I was there (French phone plan for the win – our Aussie roaming plans feel archaic and backwards in comparison). It’s actually reasonably simple: you have circles increasing in size, and when their walls or edges hit into each other, they can only continue growing by pushing into the available space – the gaps left by the curves of the circles, et voila! Hexagons. It wouldn’t work with any liquids that could mix easily (e.g. multiple pools of water would just form one giant pool), but these rocks are formed by lava which is only semi-liquid.
And that’s all the science I’m going to talk about, although I’m also uncertain of how they get so tall, and to different heights. The geological process is unclear to me and anything I looked up about that on the day has left me again.
But anyway, that’s only one explanation, and one of the newest.
In a land of myths and legends, a country famous for creatures such as leprechauns, there are much older explanations.
The most common is the tale of two giants – one in Ireland, and one in Scotland. They are set to fight. The story seems to be unclear on why, but it seems to be for sport more than anything. Anyway, the Irish Giant crosses the sea to Scotland, where he sees the Scottish Giant. And he’s much bigger than the Irish Giant, who is rapidly thinking that maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all. He runs home to his wife and tells her of his predicament.
The Giantess listens, and she has an idea. She swaddles her husband, and gets on with her daily chores.
A little later, the Scottish Giant comes by, looking for his opponent. “Oh no, he’s not in at the moment,” she explains, “It’s just me and the baby.” And she gestures to her swaddled husband pretending to sleep in the corner.
“Ahhh.” The cogs begin to churn in the Scottish Giant’s brain this time. If that’s the baby… just how big is Dad gonna be?
He decides he’s not prepared to fight the giant among all giants, and suddenly he’s running back across the sea too. The Causeway is meant to have been caused by their running – you see, over on the Scottish side, there is a small island with a similar set of rocks. And here in Ireland, there’s even one bent rock that is meant to be one of the giant’s missing shoes.
.
It’s a fun story, the little twist delightful.
In the boring version, they fight and the Irish Giant wins. (Presumably if you’re standing by the Scottish rocks you tell it the other way round though.)
There is one more version, though less common. The Irish Giant falls in love with a Scottish Giantess. Every night, he works to build a path to his love.
But his grandmother is worried that he will go to this giantess and never come back. She doesn’t want to lose him to Scotland. Every night, she sends storms and destruction to undo his work (I guess Grandma’s magic). Slowly he becomes more and more frantic in his work, until eventually he manages to make it across without his work being destroyed – only to fall down dead, exhausted, at his beloved’s feet. Grandma learns what she’s done, what her destruction has led to and she is distraught and then, in the version I read, simply vanishes into nothing.
.
So you can choose between the comedic trick, or the Greek Irish tragedy. It’s easy to see why one version is much more popular than the others.
There is more wandering to do after though – up a steep path that flattens out after a short while and wraps around the pretty sheer cliff to give you a view of a hidden cliff face. And then back the other way, I follow the Red route and a staircase until I’m up on top of everything. A few of us continue along the curve of the cliff path for a while up there too, enjoying the views.
With my day pass in hand, I eventually head back to the bus stop, continuing on to see some castle ruins, walking from there to some short waterfalls, and then back on the bus to a popular rope bridge.
They charge for this, and yet half the people I watch don’t even fully cross the bridge. They go halfway, have someone snap a picture, and then walk back. As bridges go, it doesn’t seem all that interesting or special – it’s amazing what Instagram and a fear of missing out will have you doing I suppose. (Though I do understand that it takes a bit of work to maintain that kind of bridge… I understand why they charge, I don’t understand the popularity.) It’s quite a pretty walk along the coast there at least.
Then it was time to reverse the process. The 221 bus from Belfast to the Causeway takes you over halfway across the country! Driving, it would take less than an hour and a half, though an extra hour gets added when going by public transport.
I was off to a very solid start and though it was just a small taster of Northern Ireland, at least I got to enjoy every second!
