Circumnavigating the UK- Day 5- a journey from Belfast to the land where giants once roamed...

Our fifth day on the cruise was a visit to the Northern Irish city of Belfast.

Now, I am not that much one for cities so I wasn't so excited by this so I was rather pleased that we chose to book the excursion to the Giant's Causeway in County Antrim as a way to get out to the coast and countryside which is much more my thing

 We had a really interesting, talkative tour guide on the bus who gave us a few extra stops to look at some views. He gave us a real in depth history lesson with questions and everything to do with the time around the Stuart family being on the throne.  It was interesting on the first half of the journey.

 We stopped and saw some beautiful coastal and sea views which I really appreciated.

 Arriving at the Giant's Causeway visitor's centre which is built out of black columns to resemble the iconic basalt columns, we were rather pleased to discover we had over 2 hours to explore on our own.  Just what we needed:  a chance to stretch our legs and explore.

 On the way, we saw some pretty flora to give the route some variety. You could pay to get a shuttle bus down there but we walked before it had even left.

 The sea looked incredibly choppy and magnificent.

 As we progressed along the path, we craned our necks for the first view.

 It was incredibly crowded there which was disappointing BUT since the basalt columns are quite extensively spread, there was always somewhere to go.

 I was particularly struck by this jutting out sort of island of columns. It is so hard to believe these were formed naturally from volcanic activity.

 Mum and I relished the amble and climb over columns of varying heights.

 I did keep thinking of that old TV show, "Blockbusters" the time though!

 It was a superb sunny day for this adventure although it was particularly windy with a slight chill.

 Around the edges of a channel formed by rocks on either side, a whole collection of grey coloured foam, like a bubble bath that has been used by a family of chimney sweeps, made its way towards the rocks. It was rather grim but oddly fascinating!

 There are stewards who stand near the edges of the rocks with whistles and they will blow a whistle if they think someone is going too near the edge or running or moving in any sort of hazardous way which I was glad about as there were some rather devil-may-care teens around..

 It was particularly surreal to see these larger sized columns towering above us.

 The whole place did feel a bit like an assault-course at times,which only added to the fun.

 There was this particularly long stretch out to sea which was excellent for seeing the power of the sea up close without fear of reprisals.

 Seeing the spume and spray hit these rocks and leave them glistening was mesmerising.

 Finally we made our way towards the mighty-looking organ of rocks.

 Alas, we didn't have time to make it to the suspension bridge that people have talked of, but our 2 hours was a sufficient length of time to really enjoy the Causeway even if we didn't get to do the whole cliff walk.

 We made our way back to the Visitor's centre and had tea and cake and bought one or two items in the shop.

The coach journey back was extremely tiresome and I longed for our loquacious tour-guide to cease the history lesson- it just became grating after a while.
We were due back at 15.45 which I hoped meant I could hop on the shuttle bus into the city so I could see a bit of Belfast for an hour but our tour guide decided to drive us around Belfast giving us a history of the troubles and taking us to the Peace wall.  Before he did this, I was rather irritated because I was frankly sick of being aboard a coach (it had been 2 hours) but actually, when he explained all the history and issues, I was glad he had chosen to give us this extra dimension to the city which I didn't really know much about. What a torturous situation and how difficult to be living in Belfast with the segregation. I pray for the situation to be totally sorted.

 These were two views from the ship when we came back - a view of the Titanic centre and  some docks.

I really enjoyed my day in Northern Ireland getting to see the Causeway and although I was a bit disappointed not to get to see a bit of the city by foot, it was nonetheless, a great experience.

Have you been?

xx

One man's trash, another man's treasure

I've shared two posts about the sea glass I found on my cruise. I really loved looking for it when I was on those beaches, so when I found myself at Walton-on-the-Naze two weeks ago, it was a no-brainer that I would search for sea glass.

 Here are my findings from the day.

 I was really delighted to find those pretty shells.  They are your quintessential sea shell.

 My happiest find, early on, was the only piece of brown sea glass I have found to date. It reminded me of some sort of Cola jelly sweet.

 This large lilac oyster shell was a surprise found later on.

 The two pieces of sort of blue and white stone are a bit of a mystery- are they shards of ceramic smoothed to this shape?

 My favourite shade is that gentle aqua colour and the majority of that lot was found as I trailed CBC up the beach towards the Naze Tower. I had to try to scrutinize the beach detritus whilst keeping up a convincing pace that said, "I am following you," rather than "Leave me alone to search for sea glass!"
That part of the beach, where the beach huts were, was much more shingly with fragments of different shells, stones and sea glass compared to the sandy beach where I had paddled.

 What delighted me was all the slightly differing shades of green of that particular part of the colour wheel.

 I think that pointy green bit needs a few more years but that was one of the first pieces I picked up so I forgot to dispose of it.

 The point of me laying it all out was that I wanted to amalgamate all my beach findings from this Summer into one neat place.
I began the process of attempting to tesselate all the pieces into the jar.

 Slowly, the hues built up.

 Two treasured pieces- that piece of pottery and the vivid blue fragment.

 At this stage, I was quite pleased by the appearance of the cross-section.

 It seemed a bit of a shame to add in the shells but I wanted a summer in a jar so in they went.

 And finally, the lid went on.

 And what a pretty reminder of the beach visits.

They do say one man's trash is another man's treasure and for me, this holds true.

Have you any sea glass. Have you searched for any since my last posts?

Any favourite pieces from this hoard?

xx