Our last days in Ireland

Classic Northern Ireland. Even though it is still raining we still love this country. Northern Ireland is just as lovely as the rest, things are a little more spread out here but we found some nice spots. The romantic ruins of Dunluce Castle have a dramatic clifftop setting, jutting out into the sea. This castle dates back to the 16th and 17th centuries and there are breathtaking views down onto the cliffs below.

Then I was determined to find this next spot with these cool trees enveloping the road that runs thru them. It is said that there is a spooky feeling
when you drive thru them because there is a resident ghost who lives there, it is a very creepy spot but fun, these trees look so cool and there are no other ones like it anywhere else in the area. It took us ages to find them as they are not considered that much of a tourist attraction, but we were glad we did.

Next stop the Bushmills Distillery, founded in 1608, the oldest distillery in the world. Trev quite liked this, he learnt that you should not really put ice in a whiskey it should be served at room temperature but you should put a drop of water into it to open up the flavour! They just had their 400 anniversary so made a special blend call 1608, quite nice, first licence ever issued to distill whiskey.
The word Whisky comes from the Irish phrase "water of life", Im sure some would agree.
Onto The Giants Causeway, a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1986, this fascinated me in particular, you cannot believe that this uniform pattern was created by nature alone, but of course it was. This natural geological phenomenon consists of around 40,000 polygonal basalt columns, forming a huge causeway that juts out into the sea. Scientists believe that the columns were created some 60 million years ago by volcanic activity. However, Irish legend tells the story that the Irish Giant Finn McCool, who was fighting a rival Scottish giant, Benandonner created a path from Ireland to Scotland to walk across the sea to confront his rival. There are similar stones on the island of Staffa in the Hebrides? But honestly when you are standing on these stones looking down at the uniform pattern it really is very hard to believe that they are there and were created by nature, one column is said to be as tall as 36' high. See even more pictures on our side bar.

Sadly its time to leave Ireland and move onto Scotland, its been so fun, its just a nice mix of all the things we like to do. You know someone said to me
last year that maybe I should go back to University and i really feel like I have with this travelling because you learn so much, lets face it, history, local art, languages, currency and economics of each country, political situations and , even psychology as you have to deal with lot of different types of situations and people, its really fun, so i kinda feel like i am in the University of life, its just a travelling one.

The people are lovely, the hospitality so friendly, we enjoyed lots of the local pubs and musicians, the Guinness was smooth and we both acquired a taste for it that will be hard to shake, the Irish breaky is playing havoc with Trevs cholesterol but what the hey, I bought a tin whistle and plan to teach myself to play it! All in all Ireland will be on our list of places to return to.

We caught the 5:30pm ferry out of Larne to Troon on Saturday on the fastcat it travels at 46knots across the Irish sea in 2 hours, carries 200 cars, 900 passengers and would put B C Ferries to shame, jet drives! We will be meeting up with our friends Nige and Rose from England on the other side tonight, so that will be fun.
Next blog we will be in Scotland.
chenty