Friday Jul 11, 2014

We were up early, as usual, and were on the road by 8:30.  We had a ‘tourist’ ride today.  Again the scenery was stunning and the people very friendly.  We were following the Coastal Road Route again today.  It was quite a hilly route today with a 10% climb out of Ballycastle.  That certainly gets your heart pumping in the first hour.

Our first stop was the Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge.  For over 350 years fishermen have strung a rope bridge 30 metres above the sea to allow them to access the best places to catch the migrating salmon.

The Carrick A Rede rope bridge is now a National Trust Site and you pay 5.60 for the privilege of crossing it.  It was well worth it, a great thrill to walk over the bridge, with a reward of lovely scenery.

As we walked up the hill towards the rope bridge, we chatted to a Canadian from Vancouver who was visiting family in Ireland.  His sister lives in Barrie.

Kittiwakes and a variety of wildlife can be seen on the walk to the rope bridge and the island it connects.

Larrybane is a lovely village that you can see from the Coastal Road, whitewashed houses and a lovely little church.

Then we spot a pink pub.

The Giant Causeway was our next stop.  You cannot see this natural phenomenon from the road.  This is also managed by the National Trust. To go through the exhibition it costs 8.60, or you can walk down the road without paying.  We didn’t go into the exhibition.  At first view the Causeway is a little disappointing, it is a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

Then you walk on it and see the way the rocks have been pushed up from the earth it is quite amazing.

It was a little difficult to walk on the causeway with the cycle shoes on, a little slippy with the cleats, we had to be careful.

Of course the truth behind the causeway has nothing to do with volcanoes, land movement etc – it is really about Finn the Irish Giant who had a rival a Scottish giant called Benandonner.  Finn challenged Benandonner to a battle and built the causeway so that Benandonner could walk over the causeway which stretched from North Antrim to Staffa.  As Benandonner appeared over the horizon, Finn realized he was much bigger than he was and ran home to his wife.  Oonagh disguised Finn as a baby and when Benandonner saw the ‘baby’ took fright at the thought of the size of his father and fled back to Scotland, tearing up the causeway on his way. Ralf’s comment on this piece of history – what a bunch of wossies these giants were.

We then headed out to Bushmills, this was going to be our stop for the night.  We stopped at a lovely campsite with clean toilets, large dish washing area, with a freezer and microwave, a games room and a TV room.  It is expensive at 20.00 per night but it is very clean and close to the distillery.

We quickly set up the tent and changed out of our cycle gear and headed straight to the Old Bushmills Whiskey Distillery, about 1 km down the road.  It was 3:30 pm by the time we got there and the last tour was at 4:00pm.  We were told that it was the “silent time” at the distillery and therefore would not see any production, but to compensate we got two little bottles of bushmills.

The fella who sold us the tickets, forgot to give me my tickets and because I had to wait a few minutes, we got another two little bottles of whiskey.  At the end of the tour, we got a good measure of whiskey as well.  All in all well worth the 7.50 for the tour.

The distillery was granted its licence to distil in 1608.

We enjoyed our free tasting of 12 year old malt whiskey whilst chatting with an American couple. Very nice couple from Ann Arbor Michigan.

When we got back to the campsite we had a chat with the owner.  We told him where we were going to cycle tomorrow and told us the A26 is MMBA – miles and miles of bugger all!  We told him we were following the River Bann route, that is prettier, he said

There isn’t many campsites on the route tomorrow so we may have to wild camp.