Giant’s Causeway. UK
Giant’s Causeway is one of the incredible wonders of nature and the most popular tourist places in the United Kingdom. This is an area of 40,000 interconnected hexagonal basalt columns, which is located in the north-east of Northern Ireland.
This place is 3 km from the town of Bushmills. Each year, nearly half a million people come here to see the amazing rock sediments. The steep basalt slopes sinuously go far into the sea from a height of the columns in a three-storey house, forming something like a bridge for the Giants. Although the very name implies that this place is associated with an unusual story, a legend.
Locals believe that the giants walked along these massive columns in ancient times; and they were as huge as these strange rock formations were. Allegedly, once there lived two giants in the neighborhood – one was good, Finn MacCool from Ireland, and another was a bad bully, Benandonner from Scotland. And Finn decided to save his homeland from the one-eyed monster and thought up to fight him.
So, Finn built a causeway across the North Channel where the two giants could meet for the duel. When Finn saw his opponent approaching, he was terrified – Benandonner was much bigger than he had imagined. Finn ran home and asked his wife to come up with something and hide him. Then a cunning wife swaddled her husband like a little baby and put it on the bench. When Benandonner came and asked whether Finn was at home, she answered that there was only a newborn baby, but the father was absent. Benandonner looked at the baby and was scared – if the child was so big, what could be the size of his father! However, he still decided to wait for Finn.
Then the wife offered a treat for the giant – tortillas. She kneaded the dough with the iron frying pans and the giant broke his teeth when tried to bite. When the wife gave Finn a normal tortilla, he ate it without any problem. Benandonner was surprised that the child was able to bite through such a solid cake, and thought that his father could be much stronger. The giant decided never to meet Finn and ran back to Scotland. Frightened, he destroyed the causeway so that Finn could not follow him. Thus, a kind of a Giant’s Causeway was formed.
Scientific point of view is as follows. Such rock formations arisen 50-60 million years ago during volcanic eruptions. Basalt rocks covered a large area in the liquid state, then, during the solidification and surface tension, they have turned into the stone hexagons. Now, these basalt formations in tens of thousands columns amaze tourists from around the world. Almost any travel program to Ireland includes a trip to the Giant’s Causeway.
In 1986, the Giant’s Causeway was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a year later it became a national park of Northern Ireland.