Today we left Derry and headed off to visit Giants Causeway, the strange rock formation on the northern coast. The weather was typically Irish. We started out the hike down to the causeway in partly sunny weather. Within about 15 minutes a storm blew in and then the rain came. We quickly put on rain gear and huddled on the north side of the rocks, using them as a wind break. The storm passed and we continued on. The famous rocks are a tourist destination and there were a lot of people there. However, we hiked on to the north of the main rocks into an area that was much less crowded and even more picturesque. We then hiked up the cliff on a path that led us to the top of the cliffs overlooking the Giant Causeway. From the top we could also look over the countryside, so we saw two different views from one spot.

Next up was an interesting tour of Bushmills Distillery, the largest and oldest distillery in Northern Ireland. The tour guided us through the whiskey making process from beginning to end. Bushmills claims their water source, the local river, was blessed by a saint hundreds of years ago and that is why their whiskey is the smoothest. Sounds like marketing to us. Sadly, photos were not allowed during the tour.

Our B&B for the night is on a farm just outside the town of Ballycastle and is lovely. Randy actually had a bit of trouble finding a place a couple months ago when making trip reservations, but didn’t think much of it. When checking in our host asked if we knew about "the race". We did not. Apparently there is a motorcycle race held every year nearby and attended by over 150,000 people. No wonder rooms were booked. We did notice a lot of motorcycles on the road and now know they are probably here to watch a high speed race on very narrow roads. Tomorrow we head back south to Belfast and then back into Ireland.