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The Giants Causeway is the jewel
in Northern Ireland's crown.
Crafted by powerful natural forces unleashed on this part of the planet
over sixty million years ago.
Back then the North Antrim coast was a hell on Earth
and it was here
this incredible beauty
was born
Today the Causeway'd geological past
sets it apart as a place of global significance.
Its importance as a World Heritage Site
attracts half a million visitors every year
and it's easy to see why.
This this is a unique landscape. A mystical space.
Ireland's earliest settlers created a mythology
that embraced the natural symmetry of the Giant's Causeway.
Its very name owes more to the imagination of the ancient tribes of the Antrim Coast
than it does to geological fact.
For them this was the birth place
of the mythological hero Fionn mac Cumhaill
on this causeway Finn fought the good fight for Ulster
against the Scottish giant Benandonna.
Intelligence won the battle
and the pathway from Antrim to Scotland was secured.
This was a land bridge worth defending.
When science and reality revisit the myth
a more powerful and important story emerges.
The Giants Causeway is the epicenter of a major geological story
the story of an island's journey across space and time.
a movement from the southern to the northern hemisphere
that began hundreds of millions of years ago.
From Murlough Bay to White Park Bay we can find signs
of the advance of this part of the planet
from below the Tropic of Capricorn
to the equator
and beyond
some five hundred million years ago.
So we came from ice to tropical forest then searing desert heat
to settle in our present temperate position
where we were convulsed by volcanic activity.
A mere sixty five million years ago
nature became the architect of what today we call the Giant's Causeway.
The lava that errupted from the earth here
cooled so quickly that it crystallized into the shapes that set the Causeway apart.
Nature fashioned these jewels with a mathematical precision
unseen on this scale anyone else in the world.
with its hexagonal columns reaching from seabed to surface, from cliff bottom to top
today this fascinating landscape supports a unique ecosystem
that boasts its own rare flora and fauna.
The visitor's experience often goes beyond the Giant's Causeway.
Northern Ireland and its North Antrim coast
boasts many other historical and unique attractions.
Whether visitors are interested in the final resting place of the Spanish Armada
near the causeway
with its vast cache of buried treasure
or ancient castles and ruins or other National Trust properties
this slice of the history of the world is the ideal starting point.
This is a place apart.
A coastline unequaled anywhere else on the planet.
This is the Giant's Causeway
fashioned entirely by nature.