Why Is The Giant's Causeway Famous?

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The Giant’s Causeway is the  unique jewel in the crown of the North Antrim coastline, It is also known as the 8th Wonder of the World. A jagged promontory of neatly packed columns of hexagonal basalt rocks created some 6 million years ago by a flow of basaltic lava. In 2019, the Giant’s Causeway received more than 998,000 visitors, a slight decrease from the more than 1 million visitors who arrived on-site the year before.

Access to the Giant’s Causeway is free. However, if you wish to use any of the facilities at the site, including parking but excluding the Visitor Information Service, the visitor experience charge will apply. So, yes you can just walk into the Giant’s Causeway.

You need to plan for at least two hours. Explore the Grand Causeway, then move beyond to the four walking trails.

It’s not called the 8th Wonder of the World for no reason. The Giant’s Causeway is spectacular. It is so unique in its appearance that it is hard to believe it is real.

This amazing stretch of North Antrim coastline is formed by hexagonal columns, all massed together at the water’s edge. It is worth coming to Northern Ireland just to visit Giant’s Causeway.

The Causeway derived the name from a local fable. The story is that it is the work of giants, particularly of Finn MacCumhaill (MacCool), who built it as part of a causeway to the Scottish island of Staffa (which has similar rock formations). The reason for building it was the motives of either love or war.

In battle between the Scottish and Irish giants, Finn swore not to let the Scottish giant off so easily and responded by tearing down the great pieces of volcanic rock that lay near the coast and stood the pieces upright, making them into pillars that formed a Causeway stretching from Ireland to Scotland.

“[This] is a question that has fascinated the world of geology for a very long time,” Yan Lavallée, professor of volcanology at the University of Liverpool, says in a press release. So to come up with answers Lavallée and his colleagues recreated the formation process in a lab.

They collected cores of the dark volcanic rock, called basalt, from deep inside the Icelandic Eyjafjallajökull volcano—the same material that makes up the Giant’s Causeway. They then heated the cores, which were about eight inches long, to more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

During heating, the rocks began to soften and turn into molten rock. The researchers then used a mechanical device to secure the rocks during cooling, measuring the temperature at which they fracture.This gave researchers a solid estimate for the temperatures at which Giant’s Causeway started splitting into columns. The results suggest it takes place just below the temperature at which the lava turns to rock, which is roughly 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers  describe the process in a new study published in the journal Nature Communications.

After a volcano explosion, the lava cools, cracks within the material grow most efficiently at certain angles. There are many places where this happened such as Devils Tower in Wyoming and the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, ancient lavas cooled into hexagonal blocks or columns.

Unfortunately you cannot drive your own car down to the Giants Causeway. You can, however, park at the Visitor Centre and take the free bus down. Car parking is also free.

Stones and coastal paths open daily from dawn until dusk. Closed 24, 25 and 26 December. Last admission to the Visitor Centre is one hour before closing.

What ocean is at Giants Causeway?Bordered by the wilds of the North Atlantic Ocean to one side and a dramatic landscape of cliffs to the other, It’s one of the best parts of Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way.

It is very challenging. Walking down is failry easy but it is the uphille walk back to the car park that will break you.

All visitors are encouraged to pre-book online before they visit. Pre-booking helps preparation for your arrival and reduces queue times for you and your party.

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