About forty thousand interlocking basalt columns stepping down into the sea in County Antrim, formed 50 to 60 million years ago when a lava flow cooled and contracted and cracked the way drying mud does, only in rock and on a scale you can walk across. Most are hexagonal, some have four to eight sides, the tallest stand about 12 metres, and the solidified lava in the cliffs behind runs 28 metres thick in places. The other explanation is that the giant Fionn mac Cumhaill built it as a road to reach a Scottish rival, and when Benandonner came over Fionn’s wife dressed him as a baby, and Benandonner took one look at the size of the child, imagined the father, and tore up the causeway behind him as he ran. UNESCO World Heritage since 1986, and named among the IUGS hundred geological heritage sites in October 2022. Nearly a million visitors in 2019; access to the stones themselves is free.
County Antrim, Northern Ireland
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