Giant's Causeway

must-see ; monument

Northern Ireland's main tourist attraction, the hexagonal basalt columns, (all 38,000 of them including the ones underwater) are amazingly uniform. A recommended walk is from the Giant's Causeway 16km (10mi) east along the coast (not the highway), past Dunseverick Castle to the beach at Whitepark Bay.

According to one of the legends, the giant Finn McCool fancied a female giant on the Scottish island of Staffa and built some stepping stones to the island where similar rock formations are found. The more prosaic explanation is that lava erupted from an underground fissure and crystallised some 60 million years ago.