Page 268 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Ireland

266  IRELAND REGION B Y REGION

6 Giant’s Causeway

The sheer strangeness of this place and the bizarre
regularity of its basalt columns have made the Giant’s
Causeway the subject of numerous legends. The most
popular tells how the giant, Finn MacCool (see pp30–31),
laid the causeway to provide a path across the sea to
Scotland to engage in battle with a rival Scottish giant by
the name of Benandonner. The Giant’s Causeway attracts
many tourists, who are taken by the busload from the
visitors’ centre down to the shore. Nothing, however, can Aird’s Snout
destroy the magic of this place, with its looming grey cliffs This nose-shaped promontory
and shrieking gulls; paths along the coast allow you to juts out from the 120-m (395-ft)
escape the crowds. basalt cliffs that soar above the
Giant’s Causeway.

The Formation of the Causeway
Hot lava
Wooded Valley
landscape 61 million years ago:
In a series of massive
volcanic eruptions
molten lava poured
from narrow fissures in
the ground, filling in
Lower the valleys and burn ing
basalts the vegetation that
grew there.
Limestone
Non-eroded
Tholeiitic surface 60 million years ago:
basalt lava This layer of tholeiitic
basalt lava cooled
rapidly. In the process
it shrank and cracked
evenly into polygonal-
Inter- shaped blocks, forming
basaltic layer columnar jointing
beneath the surface.

Steam and 58 million years ago:
gas clouds New volcanic eruptions
produced further
lava flows. These had
a slightly different
New lava chemical composition
flows from earlier flows and,
once cool, did not
form such well
defined columns.
Snow Scree KEY
15,000 years ago: At
Ice the end of the Ice Age, 1 Inter-basaltic layer
when the land was still 2 Road
frozen, sea ice ground
its way slowly past 3 Little Causeway
the high basalt cliffs, 4 Plant debris is trapped between
eroding the foreshore the lava flows.
Sea water and helping to form 5 Grand Causeway
the Giant’s Causeway.
6 Lower basalts

For hotels and restaurants in this region see pp302–3 and pp323–5

266-267_EW_Ireland.indd 266 25/04/16 11:03 am
Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
Starsight template “UK” LAYER
(Source v2.2)
Date 23rd October 2012
Size 125mm x 217mm