Northern Ireland: Giant's Causeway 2006
The legend
Legend tells that the Giants Causeway was built by Finn MacCool, a famed Irish warrior-giant, who was going about his daily duties on the north coast when one of his adversaries, a Scottish giant, started shouting and ridiculing Finn's fighting prowess. This angered Finn who lifted a lump of earth and pelted it to Scotland  as a challenge to this giant.  The Scottish giant retaliated with a rock back  to Finn shouting that if he could get his hand on him, he would make sure that Finn would never fight again but adding that unfortunately he could not swim the short distance across the Channel, so Finn would be spared that fate.  Finn was enraged by this and began to tear large pieces from the cliffs,  he pushed them into the ocean bed and made a  sturdy causeway to Scotland, when he had finished he shouted 'Now you'll had no excuse'.   Fearing to lose his own reputation and pride the Scottish giant had no alternative but come over the causeway.  Finn was tired, he had not slept for the week he worked on the causeway and did not feel ready for fighting. He thought about how he could buy some time and recuperate to face the Scottish giants, and came up with an ingenious plan. Quickly he made a large cot disguised himself as a baby and  climbed inside...... and waited.  The Scottish giant arrived at Finn's house shouting, 'Where is that coward MacCool', he noticed the crib and the baby inside it and his eyes widened in fear, he thought to himself, my goodness if this is the size of the baby? What size is the Father?. Finn climbed out of the cot and towered above the Scottish giant, this terrified him even more and in fear of meeting the father of this child he turned on his heels and ran like he had never ran before, back across the causeway to Scotland destroying it as he went.  What we see today is told to be   the remant of this causeway.
The facts
The Giant's Causeway is an area of 40,000 tightly packed basalt columns resulting from a volcanic eruption 60 million years ago1. It is located along the northeast coast of Ireland about 3 km north of the town of Bushmills in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, and a National Nature Reserve in 1987.
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