The GCW Tour, A Few Bits of the UK and Ireland: The Nicest Grass I Think I've Ever Seen

Note: I've written in the past about Sib4's honeymoon in Hawaii, and how she came back with an hour long video that looked like they'd just pointed the camera at the jungle and left it there. I fear this post may get the same reaction, because there are a lot of pictures embedded below. And, yes, most of them are just pictures of grass. But, live and in person, it was some pretty amazing grass...


Since the highest priority for the boys on this trip was to see the Giant's Causeway, we made arrangements to do that on our first day in Belfast. We'll actually see Belfast tomorrow. Once again, this was a little day trip, though in more of a van than a bus and with just fourteen people total. (Oddly enough, we saw our Dublin tour guide leading a group into the Causeway as we were heading out.)

The tour started with a brief stop at yet another castle ruin, but this one I don't recall the name of. And actually, it was more of photo opportunity than a "stop at," as we were nowhere near the castle...

Following the stop at the side of the road to take pictures of the castle, our next destination was the Bushmill distillery. Bushmill's is only a mile or two up the road from the Causeway, so a visit tends to get thrown in with most of the tours. It wasn't a full factory tour; just a stop for a free taste and a chance to spend money in the gift shop.

Next stop, the Giant's Causeway. There's really no way to explain this. The story goes (and I'm relating this at least third hand now) that there used to be a bridge between Scotland and Ireland, but the giants got angry and smashed it. As a result, you have these piles of some very snazzy, very geometrical rocks. And as the Pancake Rocks in New Zealand have shown, people will turn up for snazzy rocks. But the Giant's Causeway is a little different, because all those snazzy rocks are embedded in some of the most beautiful scenery one could find. At least I thought it was, but you can decide for yourself...

Not a bad place to spend a couple hours, no? 

At this point we need pause and contemplate Game of Thrones. In the last year, I don't think there's been a country I've visited that hasn't had at least one Game of Thrones tour. The show's popular, now five or six years old, and filmed all over the bleedin' world, so it makes sense that local tour guides would capitalize. Our tour was not specifically designated as a GoT tour (that was almost double the cost), but our guide did throw in two stops up the road from the Causeway where he claimed scenes from the show had been shot. Can't prove it by me, but maybe these will resonate with somebody out there...

Here's a different view of that second one, that shows that the lump on the left is what's left of a castle that was on this spit of and a thousand or so years ago.

I'd be curious to know if the archaeologists think it was just a very skinny castle, or if the land has fallen away around it, but I didn't think to ask. 

Our last stop, then, was the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, and there's actually an amusing story that goes along with this. The bridge connects a small island right off the coast to the mainland, and until 2002 (2008?) it was used by salmon harvesters to bring their catch onto the mainland. This was not done because it was more convenient to catch fish around the island, or even more convenient to drag them up from the island. Rather, Irish tax law stated that a fisher(wo)man who caught fish at sea and brought them on land had to pay a tax on the catch. But if you caught the fish at sea, brought them onto an island, and then walked them from the island to the mainland, you didn't have to pay that tax. The rope bridge was basically just there to facilitate a tax dodge.

And now it's just there 'cause it's really, really pretty (if somewhat terrible smelling near the cliffs where the birds nest)...

And that was pretty much the end of the tour -- though we drove back via the Northern Coastal Route, which was also amazing, but much harder to photograph at 40 mph.