Today was the first day of our four days biking in Northern Ireland. Below is where we are going - Portrush to Cushendall, with one day biking on Rathlin Island (we will take the 45 minute ferry with our bikes to get there).
We head first to Dunluce Castle. It is 27 minutes cycling from Portrush - a straight foward cycle with a steady hill.
This is what the town of Dunluce used to look like. It was a stopover from Scotland to Southern Ireland.
What it looks like now.
We arrived at 9am. Tours did not start until 10am, so we skipped that. We headed towards Ballycastle.
The Giant's Causeway was the next stop.
These perfectly geometric rocks came out of a volcanic eruption. There are 40,000 basalt columns. This was formed 50-60 million years ago - when rocks from the lava flow hit the sea, this is what happened.
We walked some of the red track.
There were so many people and I got photos mostly without them. One million people visited this site in 2018.
Then it was cycling to Carrick-a-Rede (a hole in the rock). A rope bridge 100 feet above the sea was erected here by fishermen in 1803 so they could check their nets for salmon. Men would round the salmon up around the coast by boat, when the salmon were running, and then fishermen throw their nets out by boat. The salmon dried up by 2002. In the 1960's almost 300 fish were caught a day, now there are none. Lots of tourists though.
We rode past Bushfoot Golf Club.
Darren Clarke, who we had watched at The Open (he won it in 2011), had his own special carpark.
Then off to Ballycastle, putting our heads down - a good work out this cycling.
