Giant’s Causeway

by WBlackwell on November 21, 2017

I met Paul Sayers walking the Derry/Londonderry walls and we began to chat. I told him I was heading to Giant’s Causeway the next day and he offered advice. He told me that rather than go into the Visitor Center and pay the £10.50/$14. and then walk a tarmac road to the 40,000 or so basalt columns that make up the Causeway I should cut through the field to the right and I would find a gravel path that would lead me above the main attraction and throng of tourists and offer a much better view. I could then take 140 steps down to that area. Great advice.

The Yellow Trail:

At each bend, at each overlook the vistas got better

Far off in the distance I could barely make out my last glimpse of Scotland until next year.

Those walking on the Causeway steps had no idea that they were only seeing half the picture.

Around 50 to 60 million years ago,^[3] during the Paleocene Epoch, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds to form an extensive lava plateau. As the lava cooled, contractionoccurred. Horizontal contraction fractured in a similar way to drying mud, with the cracks propagating down as the mass cooled, leaving pillarlike structures, which are also fractured horizontally into “biscuits”. In many cases the horizontal fracture has resulted in a bottom face that is convex while the upper face of the lower segment is concave, producing what are called “ball and socket” joints. The size of the columns is primarily determined by the speed at which lava from a volcanic eruption cools.^[7] The extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today. The basalts were originally part of a great volcanic plateau called the Thulean Plateau which formed during the Paleocene.^[8]

It’s late in the year for gorse to still be in bloom but here it is protected on the sun-facing landward side of the cliffs. The aroma of cocoa butter like after-sun cream was faint but still there.

As impressive as it must be to walk that gap and come out onto these basalt stepping stones, it can not equal seeing it from the top down first and then getting in close contact.

Last spring, in Edinburgh, whilst walking on the low end of the Royal Mile I passed and offered a smile and a hello to a Buddhist monk. He smiled back, gave the tradition palms together greeting, said something I didn’t understand and then grasped my right hand as if to shake it. A moment later he had placed a beaded bracelet on my wrist. and offered a blessing. I asked if was for good luck and he replied good Karma. I have not won a lottery so obviously not luck but I will not take it off either. I’m not sure how much I believe in this stuff, but I am not willing to take if off incase I find misfortune. But I have experience some good Karmic moments. Today the rain stopped as I stepped off the bus. The Sun came out just as I reached the top of the Yellow Trail. So….

On the island of Skye, Scotland, there is a stone monolith called the Old Man of Storr. This, to be honest, is even more impressive.

And you rarely see me in any posts as I’m not a big selfie guy. I believe in focusing on the object not being the object of a photograph but occasionally there is room for exception. I took my first one in Liverpool in front of my Grandfather’s old house for my late Mother’s benefit and I took this one for mine. Should I suffer the dementia that my Dad suffered, I want to be able to prove to myself that , yes, I really did go here.

This grouping looks like it might collapse and any minute but is it a human minute or a geologic minute? Has it been on the verge of collapse for millennia? Will it still be about too thousands of years from now?

Walking back from the Yellow Trail the Red Trail begins with a 140 step decent where you can either go right to the same outcropping but under where the Yellow Trail took me or left to the Steps.