Sunday 29th May

We woke up early, it was so bright outside!  Good job I brought my eyemask with me!  Outside was yet another bright and sunny day but the breeze was a cool one.  We started off by going to the Giant's Causeway, where there was so much to do and interact with in the visitors centre.  Onward we walked to the Causeway itself which is pretty impressive. Much like the Isle of Staffa, and although its a bit smaller in size than what we saw in Scotland, I felt that the rocks themselves were larger. It was bright and sunny all day so there wasn't much of a hazard of slipping on the stones, and it was fun stepping around on them because they were all different sizes.  We arrived there early in the morning - well, I say early, I mean shortly after they opened. There weren't many people walking around it at that time of the morning and we enjoyed walking right to the end of it, more or less.  By the time we decided to step away from the Causeway itself and explore the trail next to it, a pair of red shirts (wardens) had appeared, keeping people from climbing up to the very top part because the stones were loose, and another stationed towards the end, preventing people from walking to the very end.

Exploring the trail next to the Causeway, we walked around the corner past some very impressive rock formations known as "organ pipes" which is self explanitory when you see them, and further around the coast where we came upon the Giant's Boot which was fun to sit in.  The trail took us up the cliff and around to 'The Cauldron' which was basically a large cove area and here the trail ended - although we could see the remnants of the trail making its way around the cliffs about half way up. It used to go all the way along the coast just like the one along the very top of the cliff does, I imagine it would have been quite spectacular to walk along the coastline halfway down when it was doable.  We could have made our way to the very top of the cliff but as I had a cold and was struggling with my breathing we decided to continue back towards the Causeway itself (plenty of time to explore the clifftop trail later in the week) and back to the visitors centre where I discovered a few presents for people's souvenirs, birthdays and Christmas...!

We made our way to Dunluce Castle (dated to the 1500s) next, where we first stopped to eat lunch before heading in.  Mathew headed down to the beach to get a different photo of the castle while I waited up top as I was feeling quite tired at this point.

After this, we made our way back to the cottage via "The Dark Hedges" - a tree lined avenue used in a scene of Game of Thrones. The trees are incredibly old and gnarly, twisting their way around over the road,and there were quite a few people taking photos when we got there but we were able to take a few decent shots.