Jeremiah Watt

BLOG DAY4 Carrickarede and gulls

Our day at Lillian’s begins with what many in this area would refer to as an Ulster Fry, or what we would call “one heck of a breakfast”. It consists of a first round of something lite such as ceral, yogurt and fresh fruit, orange juice from Spain.

Then we move onto a plate containing Sausage, the most wonderful bacon this side of heaven, fried Soda bread, fried Potatoe Bread, fried Tomatoes, fried Mushrooms, and any style of egg you should want………………why not fried I ask??????? Great choice says Lillian, very Ulster of you. I can tell you that the Potatoe bread and Soda bread are just great. And as I said the Bacon is just fabulous. Our youth ate everything on the plate and actually came back for more. So you see Kim, tomatoes do fit in a child’s throat.

Mom and Nevada had a good 6-7 mile run, while I went for a walk out to the moorland head and took pictures of the coast. You cannot believe the size of the Conies around here……………..sorry, I forgot. A conies is a rabbit. These things look like a Shetland pony, and one would feed two familys. Believe me, I know my rabbits, my brother-in-law and I used to own over 500 hundred of these little morsels. We sold ours rabbits for meat, and if we would have had this size of Rabbit we could have been driving a Mercedes.

Church we could find as we headed north. Packed up and headed out for the drive further north, we stopped at the first church we could find that appeared open. The first Church just happened to be a Roman Catholic. We had a short message about the importance of being a part of Gods calling inot the works of the Kingdom message.

We made our way to Carrickarede, which is a famous fishing and quarry village along the Antrim Coastline. What sets Carrickarede apart is the unique coastline and how it steered the spawning Salmon during that time of the year, through a very narrow rock causeway in which the Salmon would be tightly squeezed and easier to catch. The local fisherman built a swinging rope bridge over the Atlantic by some 85 feet, to a tiny rock Island . This bridge allowed for the hanging of a curtain type net by the fisherman to catch a larger haul of fish.

The coast here is made of huge outcroppings of Limestone and Basalt mixed. The limestone lends to the coastal water color that is a unique light blue, very clear and quite pretty. The Basalt sections had huge caverns worked inwards by the sea swells, many of these caves have worked inwards by some 60 feet.. A good long walk to the site, along a rugged and rough coastline that was set above the sea b y some 70-100 feet. We made our way back to the parking lot and had a cup of tea at the Larrybane Tea Room.

We made our way further north to what is indeed a most unusual geological formation known around the world, as the Giants Causeway. It is an extruded form of molten Lava, pushed up thru the earths surface at a slow rate and over a long period of time. To some extent the lave is pushed up to a height of 400 feet.

The most commonly shown portion of this site is say 60 feet tall, and maybe some 300 feet in width, but higher columns of this same formation are very visible along the seas coastline here. The unique hexagonal vertical columns are approximately 24” in diameter, and seated tightly together rising like towers together towards the sky.

Each column is broken off into narrow sections, of maybe 10-12 inches in width, much like bands around the column.

Still with many more miles to drive, what a glorious drive along the Antrim coastline. Sunny, bright blue skies gift wrapped in huge white puffy marshmallow like clouds. The emerald green hillsides are now more frequently spotted with the freshly sheered sheep of the region, Cheviots and Suffolk’s. We motor on to the town of Bushmills, famous for having the OLDEST Distiller of fine Whiskey in the entire cotton pickin world…………YES, even longer than Jack in Tennesee.

This distiller began before 1608, but was granted the first distiller license dating to that date of 1608. It was walking tour, and we had a chance to see first hand how the whole process of turning malted Barley and water into a fine amber distillant known around the world. We ended the tour in the tasting room, and had full shots all around the table………….Nevada was kind of full so Darren volunteered to finish hers for her…………….nice guy, he sure loves to sing, Kim!!.

We had considered calling it a day, but Pine reminded us that there was one other huge old castle not far foo. This is the remains of a castle called Dunnseverty, and dates to 926. A huge, imposing rock structure located out on a rocky promontory that shoots out into the Irish Sea, sitting some 150 feet over the ocean below. It had a retractable rope bridge, of maybe 3 feet width. Once this bridge was drawn up, an attacker would be left with at least 60 feet of climbing up step rock facades.

This is a very picturesque Castle ruin, with the brilliant blue sea as a backdrop, and the sweeping Irish Coastline as a buffer to each side of this medieval construct. Under the imposing structure lay a sea swell. A sea swell is a liner hole that forms under an island promontory and thru which flows the Sea at high tide. It makes a great roaring noise, spraying water for many yards around with each surge of the oncoming waves. The rocky footings of this mount are covered in an unassailable mixture of sea ooze and green kelp or moss…….not exactly an Oceanographer here.

It was time we moved on to our Hostel for the night, my kids are wiped out and Nevada fell asleep on the ride back the Hostel. Back to the room by 8pm, and have a little time to work on the blog while the kids play a few hands of cards, and Mom reads. BY 10pm, its time to close up shop and get ready for the next days adventure as we head for Scotland tomorrow.

Good night and God bless