Giant's Causeway

The Giant's Causeway is not in the source link list as such, so I'll keep only the links given. The Giant's Causeway (Irish: Clochán an Aifir or Clochán na bhFomhórach) is an area of approximately 40,000 interlocking basalt columns. These formed from an ancient volcanic fissure eruption, which was part of the North Atlantic Igneous Province active in the region during the Paleogene period. It is located in County Antrim on the north coast of Northern Ireland, about three miles (five kilometres) northeast of Bushmills. For other uses of the name, see Giant's Causeway (disambiguation).

The Giant's Causeway was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986. In 1987, the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland declared it a national nature reserve. In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, it was named the fourth-greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom.

The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the foot of the cliff and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal, though some have between four and eight sides. The tallest are about 12 metres (39 ft) high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres (92 ft) thick in places.

Much of the Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast World Heritage Site is owned and managed by the National Trust. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Northern Ireland, receiving nearly one million visitors in 2019. Visitors can get to the Giant's Causeway for free, without going through the visitor centre that charges a fee. The rest of the site is owned by the Crown Estate and several private landowners.

Geology

Around 50 to 60 million years ago, during the Paleocene Epoch, Antrim was affected by intense volcanic activity. Very runny molten basalt pushed up through chalk beds to form a huge volcanic plateau. As the lava cooled, it shrank and cracked sideways, much like drying mud, with the cracks spreading downward. This left pillar-like shapes that also broke sideways into "biscuits." Often the break made the bottom of one piece convex, while the top of the piece below was concave, forming "ball and socket" joints. The speed at which the lava cooled mainly decided how big the columns were, and the many cracks produced the distinctive columns seen today. The basalts were originally part of a great volcanic plateau called the Thulean Plateau, which formed during the Paleocene.

Because of its key role in the development of volcanology as a science, and especially in understanding the origin of basalt, the Palaeocene rocks of the Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast were included by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) in its list of 100 "geological heritage sites" around the world. The list was published in October 2022.

Legend

According to legend, the columns are the remains of a causeway built by a giant. The Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool), from the Fenian Cycle of Gaelic mythology, was challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner. Fionn built the causeway across the North Channel so the two could meet. In one version, Fionn defeats Benandonner. In another common telling, Fionn hides when he sees that his foe is much bigger than he is. His wife, Sadhbh, disguises him as a baby in a cradle. When Benandonner sees the size of the "baby," he thinks its father must be an even bigger giant, so he flees back to Scotland and destroys the causeway behind him. Across the sea, identical basalt columns at Fingal's Cave on the Scottish isle of Staffa may have influenced the story.

In Irish mythology, Fionn mac Cumhaill is a hero with supernatural powers, not a giant. The book Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888) notes that the old pagan gods of Ireland became smaller over time and turned into fairies, while the pagan heroes grew into giants. No pre-Christian stories about the Giant's Causeway survive, but it may once have been linked to the Fomorians, a mythical people sometimes described as giants. The Irish name for the causeway means "stepping stones of the Fomorians." Letitia Elizabeth Landon also discussed these myths in her notes to a poem about a painting by Thomas Mann Baynes.

Tourism

William King, Bishop of Derry, visited the site in 1692. The next year, Sir Richard Bulkeley, a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, presented a paper about the causeway to the Royal Society. In 1739, Dublin artist Susanna Drury painted watercolours of the causeway, which won her the first award from the Royal Dublin Society in 1740. In 1765, an entry on the causeway appeared in the French Encyclopédie, and French geologist Nicolas Desmarest became the first to suggest in print that such structures were volcanic.

The site became popular with tourists in the nineteenth century, especially after the Giant's Causeway Tramway opened. Pedro II of Brazil visited the site in 1877 during a three-day visit to Ireland that was not widely publicised. The causeway had no permanent visitor centre from 2000 to 2012, after the previous building burned down in 2000. A new centre, funded by the National Trust, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, the Heritage Lottery Fund and public donations, opened by 2012. Some of its exhibits referred to the Young Earth Creationist view of the Earth's age, which led to an online campaign against creationist material in 2012. The National Trust reviewed the exhibits and made the scientific explanation their main focus, presenting creationist ideas as a traditional belief of some religious communities.

Notable features

Some rock formations in the area have been shaped by several million years of weathering. They look like objects, such as the Organ and the Giant's Boot.

Other features include many reddish, weathered low columns called the Giant's Eyes. These were created when basalt boulders moved out of place. Examples of these boulders include the Shepherd's Steps, the Honeycomb, the Giant's Harp, the Chimney Stacks, the Giant's Gate, and the Camel's Hump.

Flora and fauna

The area is a haven for seabirds, such as fulmar, petrel, cormorant, shag, redshank, guillemot, and razorbill. The weathered rocks are home to many kinds of plants, including sea spleenwort, hare's-foot trefoil, vernal squill, sea fescue, and frog orchid.

A stromatolite colony was reportedly found at the Giant's Causeway in October 2011. This was an unusual discovery, because stromatolites are more often found in warmer, saltier water than the water at the causeway.

Similar structures

Main article: List of places with columnar jointed volcanics

Basalt columns are a common volcanic feature. They can be found in many sizes and can form in slightly different ways.

Transport access

The Belfast-Derry railway line run by Northern Ireland Railways connects to Coleraine and along the Coleraine-Portrush branch line to Portrush. Locally, Ulsterbus provides connections to the railway stations. There is also a scenic walk of seven miles (eleven kilometres) from Portrush, passing Dunluce Castle and the Giant's Causeway and Bushmills Railway.