Snuggled deep into my sweater, I watched the gray sea slap the stretch of black basalt that has been depicted in legend since ancient times. And no wonder. Descending into the ocean in a lumpy road are surprisingly perfect hexagons, slick with algae and worn smooth by the pounding water and the feet of tourists. Local legend says the Irish giant Finn McCool built a road from here to the Scottish Isle of Iona, where similar formations exist.
This is the Giant's Causeway. Created millions of years ago when cooling magma cracked into vertical columns rather than fashioned by a crafty giant, the stones are impressive. Especially as the usual crowds have now faded away into the cool, misty evening.
We picked our way over the slippery rocks to take a few photos in the fading light and then scrambled back up the path to make dinner.
In the kitchen, we found our ruddy-faced South African host cheerfully chopping pineapples and tossing them into a new-bought, washed-out garbage can. To the fascinated audience, he explains that he still likes to make traditional South African home brews. He adds water, raisins, sugar and yeast and gives the tub a stir with his hairy arm. He locks a lid to the can but opens it up to check the progress an hour later: the thick, yeasty smell fogs the kitchen with the promise of future beer. "Next week," he says, "that will be perfect. Sweet and strong."
The next day we take a short hike down the Causeway Coast trail. The basalt of the Causeway columns continues down towards Carrick-a-Rede, creating a picturesque cliff-scape of pleated stone dropping into the hungry Atlantic. We made it about half-way to Carrick-a-Rede, so about three hours of easy rambling along the top of the cliffs, and nabbed a bus back to the hostel.
Our next destination was Sligo, a town on the West Coast known for its surf. To get there, we drove through the western corner of Northern Ireland, where each village is proclaimed to be either Loyalist or Catholic by their flags. The Loyalist villages are plastered with Union Jacks, on flagpoles, on houses and strung over the streets.
We crossed the border into the Republic of Ireland and headed south through the impossibly green countryside. This is a true cliche, at least in this region. It rains all the time, so the fields and the forests are lush, sporting every shade of green. Even the tree trunks are covered in creeping ivy vines.
We made it out to Strandhill Beach near Sligo, but the waves were tiny and the water glassy-flat, so we dropped the surfing plan. Instead, we climbed Knocknarea, a pleasant if slippery forty-minute hike up the tabletop mountain that watches over County Sligo. At the top is a massive rock cairn - legend claims this to be the tomb of Queen Mabhe, or Maeve, an ancient Celt who makes appearances in mythology all over Britain and Ireland. There is speculation that below the great cairn lies a passage tomb that would rival the size of Newgrange, but it has never been excavated.
We drove out to the Arrowrock Hostel, south of town, to check in and decide what to do with our afternoon - fortunately, our host enthusiastically told us the perfect plan.
So an hour later, we drove up a bumpy, pothole-ridden track, let ourselves through a sheep gate and parked the rental car. We circled a small ridge, and once we ascended, we found our goal: Carrowkeel, a collection of mid-size cairns marking passage tombs older than Newgrange by a thousand years or two. They haven't been reconstructed or even excavated. They've sat on this ridge, white quartz exteriors glittering in the morning sun, for somewhere between five and seven thousand years. There are fourteen on this set of ridges, and where we were, there are four.
Two are in good shape, although they don't sparkle white like they once did, so we dug out the headlamp. For the first, I climbed over the entrance stone and crawled backwards (otherwise you end up on your back) through the short, narrow tunnel. Dan followed me with a bit of squeezing.
The inside is maybe three metres tall, so we could both stand comfortably. Like Newgrange, the passage opens into a small central chamber with three alcoves at right angles. The inside is smaller and less elaborate than that of Newgrange, but we were free to examine it for as long as we wanted. The only other people on the ridge were an older trio of Irish expats on vacation from England.
The second one was slightly larger, but identical in design. We examined a caved-in cairn, and I belly-crawled into the fourth to confirm that although the passage is still open, the inner chamber has collapsed. We also saw a shallow pit lined with stone slabs that looked very much like the prehistoric graves that are modeled at the Museum of Archaeology in Dublin.
We spent the next day, Sunday, in the Burren National Park, a rugged and stony landscape that, in the south end of the park at least, plunges abruptly into the sea. These are the gorgeous and alarmingly steep Cliffs of Moher.
(Also known as the Cliffs of Insanity in the film 'The Princess Bride,' which, if you have not already seen it, will change your life.)
We drove past the entrance to the visitor's centre and spent a good half hour whipping around the tiny country lanes just south, until we found a suitable spot to leave the car. The weather was shockingly perfect, so we decided to walk along the cliffs from the Hag's Head formation, where a trail begins, to the visitor's centre and back.
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| Yep, that's me behind the sign. |
Officially, you're not supposed to leave the visitor's centre area, where there are walls to prevent you falling to your death, but the trail is beautiful and worth the vertigo so long as you focus on staying on the path and don't leap about like an idiotic gazelle.
We spent the final two nights of our road trip in County Kerry, in the southwest corner of the island.
The first day, we took the famed scenic drive around the Ring of Kerry, where the views of the sea and the jagged islands and the cliffs are beautiful - and in the evening, the tour coaches on the thin roads are mercifully few. We explored an Iron Age ring fort and then drove back to our hostel in Tralee at dusk, through the fairytale forest of Killarny National Park.
And finally, we spent the day at Brandon Beach on the Dingle Peninsula. We rented surfboards and wetsuits for the afternoon (€10 for the day! ) and rolled around in the waves. They weren't huge, but big enough for us to work on standing up and retaining control. It's always nice to see improvement!
In the evening, we drove around Dingle, but I was tuckered out and slept through most of it.
The touristy parts of Ireland - that is to say, most of it - are so for a reason. They are gorgeous, green forests and pastures, they are dramatically stunning cliffs. But on the sidelines there are still quiet and rewarding places. Ours was Carrowkeel - to find those tombs just waiting for us, unattended... amazing.
S.
