Emmy and Clyde-ANTRIM COAST

Our drive up the Antrim Coast was beautiful and makes me want to live in Northern Ireland so bad! There were the prettiest little farm houses with sheep everywhere and lovely, rolling countryside and I decided that if I ever have a farm I want sheep. Anyway, the first coastal town we came to was Portrush and started to follow the coastal highway. We stopped at a beach that was actually having a surfing competition. It had to be freezing for them, we felt how cold the North Irish Sea was and I knew you couldn’t pay me enough to do that, but they looked like they were having fun. The next spot we came to was the Dunluce Castle ruins that are located on a cliff right by the sea. In the 1800s part of the castle fell into the sea when the cliff gave way and Dunluce Castle was left to ruin and they moved further inland. It was really neat to walk around there was actually a place where you could walk into this tunnel under part of the castle that led into the sea, all the time being amazed by the beauty surrounding us. Our next stop was Bushmill where we took a tour of Bushmill’s Distillery, the oldest licensed whiskey distillery in the world. The tour was interesting, but when it came to the free sample of their whiskey at the end, we both discovered that we really, really don’t like whiskey. Both of us really wanted to get to the Giant’s Causeway and Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge before it got too dark, but thankfully both things were close together. The Giant’s Causeway was amazing and obviously created by Finn MacCool, the giant, and not all that volcanic nonsense that the scientists talk about. :) In Rick Steves’ Ireland travel book he describes the causeway as “the earth offering God 60,000 cigarettes” and that’s a pretty accurate description. We played on the rocks for a bit then walked back up the long path to head on to the rope bridge. I’ll admit I was a bit apprehensive about crossing this bridge, it wasn’t the height thing, it was the ROPE bridge part. Well, it was about a kilometer walk to get to it and by the time we got there I had decided that I would do it. I did and was just fine, felt pretty accomplished too. The water was so pretty and blue and you could see Scotland! It had started to get sort of dark on the hike back to the car and we decided to take a different route back to the airport so we would be able to catch our flight to Scotland with plenty of time. We stopped in Ballycastle to find some food and ended up buying PB and J fixin’s at a grocery store. Clyde drove while I made us sandwiches on our map…it was pretty comical I must admit. Our flight was at about 9pm and we were in Scotland before 10pm. We took a cab to a hotel near the airport and rested up for our first full day in Edinburgh!