Giants trail coast ireland. The Road of the Giants is the creation of the Irish giant Finn. Road of the Giants - geological wonders in stone

The address: Northern Ireland, 3 km from Bushmills
Coordinates: 55°14"25.3"N 6°30"40.3"W

Short description

The village of Bushmills, located in County Antrim in Northern Ireland, is known for two attractions. This is "Old Bushmills" - the oldest whiskey distillery in Europe and a natural phenomenon called "The Giants' Road", or "The Giants' Trail".

From a distance, the “giant road” looks like an ordinary rocky stretch of coast, but when you get closer, you can see how tens of thousands of blocks, arches and columns go down into the depths of the sea, resembling a giant path. A few centuries ago, scientific discussions about the origin of the Giant's Road did not subside.

Some researchers argued that the Giant's Path is huge crystals born at the bottom of the ancient sea, and opponents objected to them: "No, here the surf exposed a petrified bamboo forest." Today, the scientific world has come to a consensus: in the territory of County Antrim, there was the largest lava plain in Europe.

Its basis was basalt erupting from the mouth of an ancient volcano. The molten basalt hardened and cracked, forming regular hexagonal prisms. Together, these prisms create an amazing pattern that vaguely resembles a honeycomb. The road of giants has 40 thousand basalt structures. Stone columns fit so tightly to each other that one might think that they were driven into the ground by an ancient hero. The dark color of the columns and their exceptional hardness are due to the fact that they are composed of basalt with a low concentration of quartz, but rich in magnesium and iron. This reduces the rate of their destruction due to the impact of the rough waters of the Atlantic.

Road of the Giants in Celtic Myths

Even in the III century. n. e. the Celts sang the Road of the Giants in legends. In ancient times, a giant named Finn Mac Cumal lived in Ireland. Opposite him, across the strait, the one-eyed evil son of the gods, Goll Mac Morna, settled.

Finn decided to fight his enemy neighbor, but he couldn't swim and started building a bridge. For 7 days and 7 nights, Finn did not close his eyes, dragged huge stone rods, and in the end got tired and went home to sleep. In the meantime, Goll crossed the bridge to Ireland and came to Finn.

Finn's wife was not at a loss: she swaddled her husband like a baby and lied to Goll that this was her sleeping son. In addition, the woman treated Goll with pancakes, inside which she baked flat frying pans. The enemy broke their teeth on them. And the second cake, a simple wife, gave to the “baby”, and he ate it with appetite. “If a child is so huge and so easily bites through pancakes that I break my teeth on,” Gall thought, “then how strong must his father be?” Seriously frightened, Goll rushed to run, breaking the entire bridge behind him.

Road of the Giants - geological wonders in stone

In addition to the Path of the Giants, on the same plateau you can see the "Organ of the Giants". It consists of 60 high straight columns resembling the pipes of a huge organ - a musical instrument. Another attraction of the Giant's Road - "Smokestacks" - is associated with the Spanish "Invincible Armada". Under the influence of waves and wind, pillars of an unusual shape formed on the basalt cliff. From the sea they can be mistaken for the chimneys of a huge castle.

The legend says: in 1588, the Spaniards from the ship "La Girona", fleeing after the defeat of the "Armada", began to fire at the cliff, deciding that in front of them was the enemy's castle. The ship "La Girona" crashed on the rocks, taking with it 1300 human lives. The treasures of La Girona, raised from the seabed, are stored in the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland is a unique natural phenomenon: interconnected basalt hexagonal columns create amazing landscapes that resemble a natural pavement. The path is the result of the activity of an ancient volcano; ledges were formed when a lava flow cooled. trails: the road was built by the hero of the Celtic myths Finn McKumal.

The pavement of giants really could serve as a road: columns of different heights (from 6 to 12 meters) seem like a ladder, and cracks are the result of a sloppy layout of a nature trail.

In 1986, the Bridge of the Giants was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

To visit the Path of the Giants, you should choose comfortable clothes and shoes, best of all - with rubber soles.

It is better to plan a trip to the Bridge of Giants for the period from late spring to autumn. There are no tours of the Giant's Path during winter. Be careful: the weather in the north of Ireland is quite changeable. In strong winds and rain, approaching a cliff can be dangerous.

The Tourist Office, where you can get detailed information about Causeway of the Giants and buy souvenirs, is located at 44 Causeway Road. When buying a ticket, tourists receive an audio guide in Russian (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Japanese and Mandarin are also available).

How to get there

The bridge of the giants is located in the north-east of Northern Ireland, 100 km from Belfast. Bus service connects the Giant's Trail and Belfast with tourist buses (mainly in the summer) and bus 252, which circles along the picturesque Antrim Coast.

From late spring to early autumn, you can get to the Bridge of the Giants by tourist buses from Bushmills, as well as from another attraction in Northern Ireland -. In summer, minibuses also run from the Tourist Office.

From Belfast and Londonderry you can also take the Translink trains (www.translink.co.uk). The nearest railway stations to the Bridge of the Giants are Portrush and Coleraine, from where buses run to the coast.

A steam railroad connects Bushmills and the Giant's Trail; the station is located 200 meters from the main entrance to the natural park.

Travel time from Belfast by car is about an hour and a half. Follow the M2 to the junction with the A26. Turning right, follow until the turn onto the M2. After passing the town of Ballymena, continue on the A26 to the town of Ballymoney. Turning right, follow Ballybogy Road to the junction with Priestland Road. Turn right again and continue to Causeway Road.

Location

The Causeway of the Giants is located in County Antrim at .

The coast of Northern Ireland (Great Britain), 3 km from the city of Bushmills, is covered with 40 thousand basalt (rarely andesite) columns. This place is called "Giant's Road" (Giant's Path). The road, as well as the Causeway Coast on which it lies, were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. Most of the columns are hexagonal, although some have four, five, seven or eight corners. The tallest column is about 12 meters high.
According to a scientific hypothesis, these bizarre stone pillars were formed 50-60 million years ago, when, during a volcanic eruption, hot and very liquid basalt lava broke through to the surface right in the bed of the then existing river. The outer layers of lava quickly cooled down under the influence of water and formed stone columns, as if driven into the ground (this effect was achieved due to the mass of lava that pressed through the river bottom under it).

Path to the Giant's Trail:

In one of the Celtic myths of the III century AD. it is said that the warrior hero Finn McCumal, who lived in Ireland, was constantly insulted by his neighbor, a one-eyed giant named Goll, who lived across the strait from him (in Scotland). One day, Finn McKumal decided to teach the giant a lesson, and since he could not swim across the bay, he set about building a bridge. For seven days and nights he dragged huge stone rods into the sea, and finally the bridge was ready. Tired after overwork, Finn decided to get a good night's sleep before the upcoming battle. At this time, the Scottish giant, seeing the bridge, ran across it to Ireland and began to knock on the door to the warrior. The warrior's wife was frightened and came up with a trick: she swaddled him like a baby. In addition, she treated Goll with cakes, inside of which she baked flat iron pans, and when the giant began to break his teeth about them, she gave the second cake, a simple one, to the “baby” Finn, who calmly ate it. Having imagined what a giant the father of this rather big “baby” would be, Goll fled in horror, destroying the bridge along the way. Therefore, only the beginning of the bridge, extending into the sea, has survived to this day:

About 40 thousand huge stone columns are so closely adjacent to each other that it seems that some giant, the hero of Irish myths and legends, installed them here. The diameter of these pillars is from 30 to 50 centimeters, they have even tops and several faces (a quarter has five, the rest has four, seven and even nine corners). The Path of the Giants (or, as it is also called, the Road of the Giants) is located in Northern Ireland, not far from the small town of Bushmills. It encircles the cliffs that are located on the coast of the Causeway Coast, and then gradually goes under water towards Scotland.

The scale of this amazing place is amazing. If you look at the Road of the Giants from above, then it really is extremely similar to a stone-paved road that stretches along the coast for 275 meters and goes into the Atlantic for another one and a half hundred meters.

The average height of the pillars is about six meters, although it is not uncommon to see columns twelve high. If you look at them from above, they are somewhat reminiscent of a honeycomb, since they organize hexagons among themselves, so closely spaced in relation to each other that it is quite difficult to insert even a thin knife between them.

Absolutely all the pillars are dark in color and incredibly hard - scientists explain this natural phenomenon by the fact that they consist mainly of basalt rich in magnesium and iron, which at the same time has a small amount of quartz. Thanks to this composition, the columns are able to successfully withstand the destructive effects of the winds and rough waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

The columns of the Giants' Causeway in Ireland form three groups of sites:

1. Big trail. The columns of this group are the largest and begin near the rocky mountains. At first they look like a cluster of huge stone steps, some of which reach up to six meters in height. Closer to the water, the steps gradually level off until they begin to form a stone-covered road, which is 20 to 30 meters wide.
2. Middle and Small trails. The pillars of these groups are located near the Great Path and, in shape, are more likely not like a road, but like barrows. Since each such column has a flat top, it is possible to carefully (especially near the water, because there they are extremely wet and slippery) to move from one column to another.
3. Staffa Island. At 130 km from the coast there is a small uninhabited island of Staffa (in translation - "island of pillars"), on which there is, as it were, a continuation of these columns. Between these pillars is the main attraction of the island - a huge Fingal cave, which is about 80 meters long.

cliffs

The columns themselves on the Causeway Coast are located around the cliffs, which people later gave rather original names. For example, two of them were named after the Harp (the columns from this cliff descend to the coast in a curved line) and the Organ (the straight and high pillars that are located near it are very reminiscent of this musical instrument).

There are cliffs with such interesting names as the Giant's Loom, the Giant's Coffin, the Giant's Cannons, the Giant's Eyes. Here you can also look at the Giant's Shoe - a two-meter cobblestone that resembles these shoes (it was even calculated that the giant who wore such a product must be at least 16 meters tall).

Chimneys of Giant's Path

There is another interesting place on the Road of the Giants - Chimneys, which frightened the already defeated "Invincible Armada" several centuries ago.

It happened for a simple reason. Some pillars of the Giant's Road in Ireland not only rise on the coast, but also look like the chimneys of a huge castle from the sea. The Spaniards confused him with him, and fired cannons at “enemy territory” - that is, an absolutely deserted territory.

This story ended badly for the Spaniards: their ship crashed against the rocks, and many people died. The treasures found from the ship, after they were raised from the bottom of the sea, can now be seen in the Ulster Museum, which is located in Belfast.

Legend

There is nothing surprising in the fact that the Giant's Road has its own legends and myths that explain its appearance and formation.

The ancient Irish believed that the Giant's Road was built by the Irish giant Finn McCool in order to get to his sworn enemy, the Scot, who lived in the Hebrides, and fight him in order to decide who was stronger.

Further versions are slightly different from each other. According to one of them, seeing that his opponent is bigger and more powerful than him, Finn ran away. And when he saw that the Scot was chasing him, he persuaded his wife to swaddle him like a child and leave him to sleep on the shore. According to another version, while the Irishman was building the road, he was so tired that he fell asleep on the coast, and his wife, seeing that the rival was approaching, swaddled him and passed him off as a child.

In any case, seeing a huge "baby", the Scottish giant decided that it was better not to mess with his father and gave up, and so that the Irishman would not catch up with him, he destroyed the path.

Study of

Interestingly, the Road of the Giants became widely known only at the end of the 17th century, when the Bishop of Derry began to heavily advertise this amazing place. And at the beginning of the 19th century, tourists began to appear en masse here.

Despite the fact that this area is declared a national nature reserve by the Department of the Environment of Northern Ireland, there are absolutely no areas closed to the public, and tourists can walk wherever they want and where they can walk. This fact is quite liked by tourists in this country.

The Road of the Giants is unique in that, despite the fact that something similar exists in other parts of the world, it is here that the largest concentration of such pillars is located. There is nothing surprising in the fact that for many centuries scientists have debated how exactly the Path arose.

Some of them assured that the giant pillars are actually huge crystals that arose a long time ago at the bottom of the ancient sea. Others said that the pillars are actually a petrified bamboo forest.

In our time, most scientists agreed that the largest lava plain in Europe once existed here. It was formed thanks to a huge layer of limestone, which is located under the territory of Northern Ireland. In ancient times, molten lava flowed out through its faults during volcanic eruptions, which covered the earth with a layer of 180 meters, after which it began to cool and harden. And it didn’t become a shapeless mass because it was based on basalt.

After some time, during cooling, the lava began to slowly decrease in volume, and thanks to the basalt, hexagonal cracks formed on its surface. When the inner layers of magma began to cool, these cracks began to deepen and formed hexagonal columns.

This theory was confirmed by a group of scientists from Toronto, who, after experiments, were able to prove that the slower the magma cools, the larger the columns are. Thus, the secret of the appearance of such an amazing natural phenomenon as the Giants' Trail in Ireland was revealed ... Or not?

Giant's Road is an impressive rock formation on the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland. The site consists of about 40,000 basalt columns rising from the sea. Giants' Causeway is Northern Ireland's only UNESCO World Heritage Site.

An unusual formation arose as a result of natural processes during the Paleogene (65-23 million years ago), when Northern Ireland was subjected to powerful volcanic activity. During this period, molten basalt was in contact with the Cretaceous layers, forming a lava plateau. As the lava cooled quickly, the plateau shrank and cracked, forming 40,000 hexagonal columns of various heights that look like giant steps. The height of the largest of them is almost 11 meters.

Legend

Popular mythology attributes the creation of the dam to an Irish giant named Fionn mac Cumhaill (or Finn MacCool). To prove his superior strength and status, Fionn decided to take on a rival, a Scottish giant named Benandonner. Since there was no boat big enough to take the huge Finn across the sea to confront Bennandonner, he built his own step ladder from Ireland to Scotland.

However, when he crossed the sea, he saw how great Bennandonner was. He ran back to Ireland before Bennandonner saw him, but the causeway was built and Bennandonner came to fight. Fionn climbed into the crib, and when Bennandonner came to the door to fight him, his wife told him not to wake the baby. Seeing how big "baby" Fiona was, Bennandonner got scared and ran back to Scotland.

Although the phenomenon of basalt columns is relatively rare, there are several such examples of rock formations found throughout the world, including in Scotland, Los Prismas Basalticos in Mexico, and Devil's Postpile in California.