Giant's Causeway & the Coast

The next morning, after stopping at Belfast Sinn Fein headquarters, we started our drive up the coast. Within fifteen minutes we were at a seaport town Carrickfergus, home of Carrickfergus Castle. It seemed like every few minutes we were both amazed by the the scenery around us. It is easy to see why the Causeway Coast is one of the best driving routes in the world. The rain was pretty good to us; it would stop every so often for our pictures. The other wonderful thing was that the rain and sun were working nicely together. We saw at least eight rainbows in two hours, including the beginning and the end of one rainbow. We stopped several times along the way, dodging the wind and rain long enough to grab some quick photos. It is definitely time for us to get a hat and sweater.



We then stopped at Glenariff Park. The road to the park is in the middle of a glen, which gave us wonderful views of the valley and waterfalls flowing down the cliffs. Through the town, Cushendun, we took several roads that are very narrow and that trucks and buses are not allowed. We arrived at the Carrick-a-rede Bridge and again, due to the wind advisory in the area, it was closed. Giant's Causeway was a few miles down the road, but we arrived shortly. The wind was blowing into us and walking down the hill was literally like walking through a wind tunnel. Kelly almost decided to stay in the car because of the frigid weather. Luckily, she decided to stick it out because the Causeway itself was incredible, especially the small, brown bubbles that blow everywhere. We are not sure why the bubbles are brown, but we suspect some Guinness has something to do with it. We hung around as long as we could before making the trek back to the warmth of the car. As we reached the steep hill that leads to the car, we looked at each other, and though that we did not want to climb the large hill. The wind helped us here. We never went up a hill as fast as we did on this day. We were almost flying!



So far, the day was absolutely wonderful! We were in great moods, looking forward to some tea, coffee, and food. Then, all of the day's rainbows disappeared and several minutes later, Steve was outside in the twilight rain, changing a flat tire! Kelly hit a curb on the passenger side. The tire had a gash on the side, which meant trying to get a new tire. The only problem was that we were in the middle of nowhere!! We put the spare on, drove to our hostel in Downhill (which was amazing and right on the beach - see below) and tried to figure out what to do next. Of course, we both panicked that this could possibly ruin our trip and spent the night thinking about this possibility.



The next day, the first "tyre" place we stopped at, the people were friendly. The only problem was that they did not have the tyre size we needed, and could get it for us that afternoon. Usually, that would be fine, but we were in the middle of nowhere and didn't have a place to go. They didn't even really have a sitting room. We decided to keep moving to Derry and find the next one. As we were arriving in Derry, we saw a tyre shop that had the tyre we needed. So twenty minutes and 70 pounds later, we were arriving at our hostel for our day in Derry - on our way again!