Ireland/UK Trip: Day 8 - Bushmills, Giant's Causeway, and Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

We got up really early on Day 8 (what else is new?) to get on the road for another busy day. Sharon, the proprietor of Dromard House, was incredibly accommodating, and got up to serve us breakfast at 6:30! We were grateful, mostly because Sharon's breakfasts were do darn good! As soon as we were finished, we hit the road.

We were headed toward the northern-most point of the island of Ireland. There are some pretty cool things to see up there!

Our first official stop was to be the Bushmills Distillery in Bushmills, Northern Ireland. But as we drove toward the town, we decided we had enough time to take our time and enjoy the scenery along the "Causeway Coastal Route," a drive that follows the coast of Northern Ireland from Londonderry in the west, to Belfast in the east.

We weren't on this drive for all that long, but it was long enough to take in some pretty neat sights, such as Dunluce Castle, which sits on the edge of a cliff and dates from the thirteenth century.

We followed the Causeway Coastal Route to Bushmills, where we joined a tour of the distillery. This was our fifth and final distillery tour, and it was once again different from the other tours we had been on. Bushmills is a real, working distillery, similar to Kilbeggan but much larger and more commercial.

Bushmills is owned by Diageo, the same company that owns Guinness and Smithwick's, among many other well-known brands of liquor. They also bottle several competitor whiskeys, right here at their distillery. Unfortunately, we visited on the weekend, so the bottling portion of the plant wasn't operational. We did get to see it, though, and learn a little about how it works.

Although it was interesting, of all the distilleries we toured, Bushmills was probably my least favorite. This might be due to the fact that the guide was very young and clearly new to her job (it may have been her first tour) or simply that, by this point in the trip, we were experts at whiskey-making and just didn't need to hear, for the fifth time, that Irish whiskeys are generally distilled three times and must be aged for at least three years to be called whiskey. Blah, blah, blah.

But when the tour was over, we did get an opportunity to choose which Bushmills we wanted to sample. Brandon tried a 12-year, and I tried a 10-year. It was neat to compare the two, and it turned out that, while Brandon preferred the 12-year (he's always had expensive taste), I liked the 10-year so much that a bottle of it graces the British Isles Bar ("BIB") that was set up in our dining room shortly after our return home.

From Bushmills, we made our way toward Giant's Causeway. Some geologists believe that this very interesting landscape along Northern Ireland's coast was formed over 60 million years ago by volcanic eruptions and other such natural events.

But Irish legend holds that the creator of the Causeway was Irish giant, Finn MacCool. Enraged by a Scottish giant across the channel, Finn built a land bridge - now the causeway. But once he crossed over to Scotland and got a look at the rival giant, Finn became afraid; the Scottish giant was much more giant than he was! He headed back home but knew that the other giant would follow him. While they waited for the Scottish giant's arrival, Finn's wife came up with a plan. She dressed him like a baby and put him to bed. When the Scottish giant arrived, he saw how large the "sleeping baby" was and could not imagine how big his father must be. Frightened that he would never be able to fight such a giant, he returned to Scotland, tearing up the land bridge as he went.

The audio guides that we carried around with us that day told both the facts and the legends surrounding this magical place. As we took it all in, we agreed that it was sometimes easier to believe the legends than the facts. I guess it's just hard to imagine what nature and time are capable of.

As with the Cliffs of Moher, I don't trust myself to find sufficient words to describe what this place is like. So I will just show it to you.

 

 

 

 

As you can see, it wasn't all that nice of a day. Still, we were reluctant to leave this magical place. As usual, though, we had other places to be. Fortunately, we didn't have far to go.

We stopped at a place called Ballintoy Harbour, just up the road, where we shared a delicious shepherd's pie for lunch and climbed on more rocks that we probably weren't supposed to.

From there, it was just another short trip to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. This bridge connects the mainland to a very small island, and it is possible that salmon fishermen have been building bridges here for over 350 years. They would put the bridge up at the start of each fishing season, then take it back down when the season was over. Fishing no longer takes place in this area (the salmon population has simply decreased too much), and a permanent bridge has been put in place for brave tourists to cross.

The bridge is stunning from afar...

...and only a little scary to cross over.

Here we are, safe (and a little bit wet and cold) on the other side.

After a fun but exhausting day, it was finally time to head toward Belfast, just over an hour away, where we would spend the next two nights. We found our hotel relatively easily (that was a first!), then headed to the Belfast City Airport to return our little Nissan Micra.

We'd had it for five days and driven the equivalent of 1066 miles.

Without the car, we had to hail a cab back into the city centre. Our cab driver, a huge fan of DisneyWorld, took us to Bittles Bar. This was one of the coolest pubs we went into on the entire trip. And would you believe, that out of the 2399 pictures we took in 15 days, not a single one was taken at or in Bittles?

It's a cool enough place to have a bunch of pictures available on Google Images, though!

After a busy five days driving all over the Irish Isle, we welcomed a chance to sit back and relax in this cozy pub. We had a couple beers and a whiskey or two before finding a McDonald's (don't judge us - it was the only place still serving food at 10:00 pm!) and calling it a night here in Belfast. We'd have plenty of time to explore more of this city the following day.