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An Incomplete Record of an Incomplete Life….
A Giant Day…
…We got up Thursday morning and went through the exact same routine as Wednesday morning, the only difference being that we knew we were going on a tour today. We were directed to our bus where we met Sean, our tour guide for the day. He confirmed with us that we were doing the hike and then told us that they were expecting Hurricane Lorenzo ( now downgraded to a storm, or something less than a hurricane) to partially hit the area we were walking. This great idea of mine to do this hike was looking better and better! We got onto the bus and after about an hour, we arrived at the Giants Causeway where they dropped off the rest of our non-hiking group. Out of 40 some passengers, only 5 were doing the hike, which again tells me I may have made a bad decision. The bus drove us a couple of miles down the road where we met our hiking guide, Ewen. He again told us about the impending storm and that we may have to shorten things if it gets too bad. So off we went to start our hike!!
As it turned out, the bad weather stayed away and we were still able to do the full 8 or so kilometers of the hike and it was so worth it. The hike basically took us along the cliffs edge towards the Giants Causeway, which provided views that wouldn’t have been possible if we had just gotten off the bus with the rest of them. There were times when the wind was blowing hard enough to stagger me (remembering we were on the edge of cliffs on the Atlantic Ocean) but the majority of the time it was very tolerable. It’s hard to explain in words some of the views so I’ll just leave a series of pictures.
The hike ended at the Giants Causeway which is a cool formation of rock that was formed by either volcanic lava or a giant. It’s a very interesting mythology and worth googling, but the formation is perfectly formed cylinder-like rocks.
After exploring the hike, which took about 3 1/2 hours, we met up with our bus mates and continued along the bus part of the tour. One of the stops was at a rope bridge, that was closed due to the high winds and rainy weather (yes the storm was catching up to us). We were still able to walk down to it which gave some great views.
The one other interesting part of this area of northern Ireland, is that a lot of Game of Thrones was filmed in the area. There is actually a specific tour that just takes you to Game of Thrones spots. But our tour passed some of the spots which our guide pointed out. The coolest one in my opinion was where Castle Black and the ice wall was. The rest of the tour was along the coast line that wound it’s way back to Belfast, which once again was loaded with scenery.
Once back in Belfast, we were starving as it was a 9 hour tour and we only had a quick stop for a sandwich for lunch. Not only were we starving, we were also beat as we were up until 10:30 the night before!! Our plan was to go to the Meat Locker for supper, a drink, and dessert, which we pulled off magnificently!
Obviously today we had a lot of steps. A grand total of 17,300 for about 12.5 km. Friday we start our journey home by flying back to London and then Saturday to home.
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