April 5--Bushmills, North Ireland to Ardara, Ireland

After a breakfast of lovely farm porridge prepared by the friendly Anna, we set out for the Giant's Causeway, a natural stone formation of hexagon shaped stones leading from Bushmills into the waters of the Irish Sea. A similar formation in Scotland suggests a distant past connection. We self-guided from the Visitors Center to the Causeway and back walking in classic Irish soft rain. We were both quite impressed by the remarkable stones of the Causeway and enjoyed the clever self-guided audio tour.



Much of our walk was through soft Irish rain, adding to the magic and mystery of the Causeway.  How Mother Nature came up with perfectly shaped four to ten sided stones, is a wonder.  The columns themselves were well over our heads where a passage had been constructed to allow for hikes along the Causeway.

As we drove to the far west coast of Ireland, 
County Donegal, we stopped, along the way, 
at Grianan Aileach, a ring fort which was the 
historic seat of the O'Neills, Kings of Ireland 
from the 5th to the 12th century.  The fort is 
located on a hilltop with commanding views 
over two loughs and the counties of Donegal, Derry and Tyrone.  It would have been impossible to approach it from land or water without warning.  

Lunch, one of our best meals--pork belly and cabbage--was at a very unlikely roadside bar. We proceeded onto Teach Ceann Tui, in Ardara, an authentic thatched roof cottage, our only disappointing lodging, due to a persistent odor of smoke from its many previous peat firs,   Its young owner, Paul, was a remarkably delightful host.  We learned a lot about the surrounding area from him and we got to play with his two children, one of whom was named Murphy.  



Since we had arrived somewhat late and since there were no nearby restaurants, we picnicked in the cottage for dinner and retreated to the bedroom to read since there was little smell of smoke there. John toasted "the ring fort" and I toasted "the stepping stones of the giants."  Following dinner, I made the mistake of doing a load of laundry. The washer took over two hours and the dryer an hour more. I gave up on my planned second load.