Giant's Causeway ~ Faith or Fiction ?

‘Hiren, I still recommend Giant’s Causeway. It’s worth a special trip to Northern Ireland. You must squeeze in 3-4 days more….’P.Hajek was a friend from London Medical School, helping us to plan our itinerary for UK tour in that summer. Few more mails, many more hits on web sites and numerous references from the travel pages- our route for driving vacation got ultimately charted. A week in London and then another in Scotland. Northern Ireland was literally wedgedin the last leg of Wales and south England.

Excitement was palpable on everybody’s face, when we drove from Glasgow to reach Stranraer in south Scotland to catch the ferry to Belfast. Children were thrilled to experience the driving of our rented van- Peugeot 407- directly into the under belly of world’s fastest ferry- HSS Voyager. We crossed Irish Sea in less than 2 hours. Without entering in Belfast, and resisting the temptation to peep in the H&W dock where Titanic was built, we directly hit M5 to take Causeway coastal route.

Our first stop at Carrickfergus Tourist Center proved quite rewarding. ‘No need to rush here- after all this is one of the most dramatic and scenic routes in the world.’ We followed this tip and took almost eight hours to cover just eighty miles. We leisurely cruised over the bridges and under the arches, past bays and beaches, cliffs and coves, castles and churches. Every twist and turn in the road revealed new sights and spectacular scenery, compelling us for frequent stops and inciting us to snap many pictures. Detours in the country sides lead us through tranquil woods and lush vegetations, sloping farms and rushing streams.We came across many highlights of this interesting route-like unusual sundial clocks in Carnfunnock Park, magnificent Mountain Views in Glenariff forest, unique rockery at Ballycastle, colorful marina at Balintoy .

Our night stay was equally befitting to the invigorating experience of day time. Youth hostel was itself situated on a cliff top and over looking Atlantic Ocean at White park Bay, just next to the Giant’s Causeway. On the same route, on next day we visited Bushmill-world’s oldest licensed whisky Distillery. We had a thrilling experience of crossing the precarious Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge which spans 24 m deep and 18 m wide chasm between two hillocks. We were lucky to witness an Irish marriage in the medieval ruins of Dunluce, supposed to be most romantic castle dating back to 14th century. But before that, in early morning we started for our prime destination - A Giant’s Causeway- the top most tourist attraction of Ireland, and UNESCO’s unique world heritage site!

The audio visual show, in the visitor center was quite informative; it rather whetted our hunger to reach the ceann scribe [‘main destination’- in Irish language]. After about a mile’s walk, our imagination was to turn into reality. Recalling our past visits to numerous natural wonders, I was musing about the kaleidoscopic Mother Nature and recalling those weird ‘Hoodoos’ in Bryce Canyon , USA; ‘Fairy Chimneys’ in Cappadocia ,Turkey; ‘Pancake’ rocks in Punakaikki , New Zealand; ‘Stalactite Curtains’ in Phangnabay, Thailand, and so on...And lo-- we were already walking on those unusual rocks of mythological pathway! One more cosmic creation-one more 'supernatural'/ super 'natural' sculpture!!

It is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption and millions of years’ erosion. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal, although there are also some with four, five, seven and eight sides. The geometric shapes attributed to slow and uniform cooling of lava filled in a river valley. Columns of varying heights [ tallest being about 36 m] make dramatic landscape, and makes it one of the unique geological formations.

Legend tells that the giant was Finn MacCool, some 52 feet tall! Finn wanted to do battle with a rival bigger giant in Scotland, known as Benandonner. They had never met, so Finn built enormous stepping stones across the sea, so that the Scottish giant could cross to Ireland to face the challenge. The story takes a humorous twist -how the Scot was tricked by Finn’s wife Oonagh. When she heard thunderous rumblings of his footsteps and then saw the massive shadow of Benandonner across the land, she quickly realized that the Scot was far bigger than Finn and so the result of the trial of strength was a foregone conclusion. She woke Finn, bundled him into one of her nightgowns, covered his head with a bonnet and made her bewildered husband to pretend that he was asleep in a large wooden cradle. Moments later, the mighty head of Benandonner loomed into the cave. "Right, where is he hiding?", he roared. Oonagh shushed him, "Be quiet or you'll waken our baby", and pointed towards the slumbering Finn. Benandonner was alternately bemused and worried. He wondered, if that was the baby how big would the dad be? He wasn't going to hang around to meet him. He started retreating , and while fleeing back home in fear, he ripped apart the causeway, just in case he was being followed.

While returning back to the visitor center, I wondered how folklores are similar all across the world. The story and the place reminded me of our own ‘RamSetu’. In the Indian epic ‘Ramayana’, Hanuman’s monkey brigade constructed 'RamSetu' to enable Lord Rama to cross over from India to Lanka in order to rescue his wife Sita from the clutches of the evil king Ravana. I questioned myself- if Irish can sell this story to lure about 4 lakhs visitors every year , why should we shy away from our mythological characters and ask for those carbon tests to defy our deep rooted faith or defend the modern science!

Driving back on the next day to Belfast, I was day dreaming of being in a Irish pub ,but was worried of being a victim of 'slipping a Mickey Finn' [it’s a slang term for ‘drugging’ one’s drink without one's knowledge to incapacitate him/her- named after the Chicago’s infamous hotel manager] I started confusing the names of these two Finns-MacCool or Mickey.I could not figure out between the Irish Giant and an American Bartender, even in that 'day dream'? But then I comforted myself- why bother about faith or fiction…