Hello all!
Last night we had a brilliant night at the local pub. Dave (our guide) organised a guitarist called Patsy to come and play for us and we spent the evening listening to him play songs and eventually - after some courage in the form of Guinness! - joined in too! Claire, Brendon and I did a fabulous rendition of 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)' by the Proclaimers. Hahaha!!!
Woke up with a slight headache this morning but Claire and I pushed through and walked to Ballintoy Port which was really nice! We set off on the bus at 10.30am and went to the Giant's Causeway. We spent a few hours walking around the cliffs and the lower part and gaining some info from our audio guides.
The Giant's Causeway is basically a big collection of hexagonal basalt columns formed when lava cooled at a specific rate. They were buried and eventually revealed millions of years later after erosion. There are 40,000 columns all together that are up to 12m high and 45cm wide. I loved the patterns they formed - my maths teacher hat was well and truly on today taking photos to use in future classes when I talk about tessellations and shapes :)
The mythical story of how the Giant's Causeway came to be is cool too! Now I understand people speaking over here, but I can't spell what they're saying because I'm no good with Gaelic pronunciations!! Basically there was an Irish giant and a Scottish giant and they spotted each other across the water and started throwing insults and rocks at each other. They threw so many rocks that they formed a causeway and the Irish giant, realising how big the Scottish one was, retreated to his home and told his wife what had happened and that the Scottish giant followed him. His wife wrapped him in a blanket and told him to lie in bed. The Scottish giant arrived and when he asked to see the Irish giant the wife said he wasn't home but he could see their baby. Scared off by how big the baby was (how big must the father be then?!) the Scottish giant ran away, destroying the causeway and leaving only the part we see today in Ireland and a bit in Scotland.
We spent a few hours here and the highlight for me was spitting dolphins swimming really close to us. I even got some pictures of when they jumped out of the water! Very rare apparently. One of the workers there asked me to send them in.
We had a quick stop at the ruins of Dunluce Castle and then drove the hour to Derry. We checked in to our hotel and then went on a walking tour with Gyarvin, our guide from Martin McCrossan's walking tours.
For the next hour or two we were given loads of info and our guide was fantastic and so passionate and proud of his city. He knew pretty much everyone and I counted - 18 people said hello to him during our tour! He told us Derry is 23km from the Atlantic Ocean and is where loads of people left for the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Apparently 40 million people in the US said they have Irish heritage in a recent survey!
We learned that to Irish people, Derry is called Derry due to it being named after the Gaelic word 'doire' meaning oak tree in 546 AD. In the 1600s when the English arrived they tacked 'London' in front of it so these days it's also called 'Londonderry'. They've appealed to the queen to remove the first bit but not heard back.
We started our tour where the riots began on Bloody Sunday (see yesterday's post), and walked into the Bogside where we saw various murals about peace, marches and one that really stood out to me of a 14 year old girl who was shot and killed by a British officer when she picked something off the footpath on her way to school and he thought she was picking up a weapon. This one made me cry as our guide said her dad came to the mural to talk to it every day until he died.
20,000 people were there on Bloody Sunday and 14 died. One of them was Gyarvon's brother in law's brother who was just 20. Very sad. David Cameron formally apologised on 15 June 2010. Again - so recent. I was in year 12 then.
We walked the walls of Derry, saw some more "peace walls" and ended right near a pub we are going to tonight which conveniently has a chicken shop on the way home (for Guinness fuelled cravings ;) ).
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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