Vexes and Hexes (N. Ireland Pt. 1): October 14th - 17th, 2023
After a questionable amount of sleep the soft "ding-dong" of the ship intercom roused us at about 5:30 AM to prepare for docking in Belfast. We found an attendant to get us tickets for the bus off the boat (now we needed a *ticket* to use the bus to get on and off the boat??), drove 3 minutes through the dock, and found our bikes and the box truck with all our luggage. Reorganizing and reassembling into riding mode was a monumental task at 6:30 in the morning, with no coffee and only a little sleep, but thankfully the security guard on this end mostly just bemusedly watched. Unfortunately the nice-looking cafe that we'd plotted to spend a good hour or two in didn't open that early, so we hung out at a poorly-heated Greggs with mediocre coffee instead. What a long 24 hours.
The main (and really only reason) we wanted to visit Northern Ireland was to see the Giant's Causeway, a true geological wonder. Northern Ireland hosts plenty of rock climbing as well, especially at Fairhead (touted as one of the best trad climbing destinations in Britain and Ireland), so we hoped to spend about 6 days bike touring, climbing, and visiting Giant's Causeway. We landed in Belfast with scant beta for Fairhead and a marginal weather forecast, but, ever the unreasonable optimists, we hoped to find a copy of the climbing guidebook at an outdoors shop on our way out of town.
The grocery stores opened before the outdoor shops, so we decided to burn some time stocking up on food first (and a driver got kinda mad at me while we biked across an interstate off-ramp interchange). Having learned at least some lessons so far on this trip, we thought it would be smart to call around the shops first instead of just blindly biking to them; we struck out on one, and another suggested a place that was on the other side of Belfast, 10 miles in the wrong direction. That was too dang far to go out of the way on the bikes, so we decided to head on our way and check one last place that was mostly on the route out of town. A good bike path paralleled the interstate through some woods and parks at first, so that was fine, but sadly our last chance store didn't carry the guidebook either. Not off to a great start in Northern Ireland.
Unsure what to do other than keep moving forward, we continued north along the coast, towards the Giant's Causeway. Our pleasant bikeway had run out, so we spent what seemed like an endless amount of time jumping between sidewalks, side streets, and the main highway, trying to find the most appropriate place for our bikes while escaping Belfast's very busy and surprisingly long urban agglomeration. Finally we reached the edge of the city in Carrickfergus and started rural-ish highway riding, much more in our wheelhouse.
One nice thing so far was that this was a true coastal ride - no diving through or around pesky mountains like in Norway - with barely a hill to be found in our first 38 miles. Well, except for one very steep hill, when we took a detour inland to Ballycarry to visit the adorable Weavers Cafe (we desperately needed a caffeine fix and Susan got to find out what a "filled soda" is). As we left the city behind, the landscape opened to reveal vibrant green pastures, rocky coastlines, the blue-grey waters of the North Channel, and charming seaside villages.
However, we were at last having to face the fact that "wild camping" is pretty much entirely banned everywhere in the UK except for Scotland. In Norway and Scotland, we could set up our tent in any reasonable spot away from buildings and traffic, not trash the place, and move on with impunity. Not so in Northern Ireland - camp anywhere except a paid, private location, and you risked a fine and being pushed along by authorities at any time of the day. Against all logic, it's extra bad if you camp in the national parks or "Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty".
We were pretty timid about where to set up for the night, and also mindful of the fact that we needed to wait until dusk to pitch the tent. But a natural point of interest - "The Madman's Window" - looked promising, and when we rolled up to it we were delighted to find a spacious gravel parking lot, picnic facilities, and some nooks where the tent could hide from the eyes of passing motorists. We went to visit the Madman's Window, a natural arch where, according to legend, a poor young man wasted away his days gazing at the ocean where his beautiful sweetheart had drowned. Gazing out at the clumps of bobbing seaweed, uncannily similar to arms flailing for help, was a little spooky.
It had been raining off and on all day, and with evening came a significant chill as well; if we were supposed to move south to be warmer, why was Scotland still just across the water? We got a first-hand lesson in why Ireland is called the "Emerald Isle", why all those fields were so dang green, and why there's plenty of rainbows for stashing gold - it's damn wet! We did get some really nice rainbows during dinner though, and remember, without rainbows, there wouldn't be any whisky! Thankfully cooking was quick because we just needed to reheat our salt-n-pepper chip leftovers from Liverpool. Once the sun started setting we quickly got the tent set up and nestled into our sleeping bags for a bit of warmth.
This sneaky camping meant we also had to have the tent down quickly, so we woke up early to pack away our damp and frigid home. Obviously we hadn't been sleeping there - we just biked to this picnic area 30 minutes from the nearest town to make a nice breakfast at 7 in the morning. The few walkers who came by weren't fooled, but they were more concerned with the fact that we were camping when it was so cold outside than with our adherence to the law.
I had dug up enough info online to get us on a handful of appropriately-difficult climbing routes at Fairhead, so we continued on still hoping to make that work (and took a brief stop in Carnlough for - what else - a nice cafe). In Cushendun we hemmed & hawed for a bit whether to take a slightly longer and more scenic way around the coast to Torr Head, or to cut inland for what looked like an easier ride. A local woman concerned for our safety heavily advised against the Torr Head route, saying the road was exceptionally narrow and perched on the side of a mountain, so that tilted the scale and we took a hard turn to tackle the one big hill of the whole ride (but promised to visit Torr Head on the return trip).
And that hill went surprisingly well! Not too steep or long, and a pleasant mix of sunshine, breeze, and cool temperatures kept us comfortable (even if the reward of the downhill was a little chilly). After most of the descent, we pulled over in the hamlet of Ballyvoy to try to figure out where we'd be sleeping. Info online had strictly warned not to wild camp near Fairhead, not to mention we'd need to leave the tent up for a few nights, so something official was definitely in order. Much to our dismay we knocked out option after option; the typical climber's campsite was egregiously priced and maybe closed (the port-a-potty had been wheeled away, at any rate), and a few other options were also closed for the season.
So... onto the town of Ballycastle, only a bit farther from the climbing, where Google showed a few potential results for camping. We started with what we thought would be an RV Park, KOA-style place, and got our hopes up when it had some really nice common facilities and even a pool! But, talk to the reception desk, and they don't allow camping; maybe rent a "cabin" for $100 a night? Moving down the road, we stopped by something called a "caravan park"... and discovered that this term actually meant a trailer park for people's summer-vacation-home trailers. Another spot with a "camping" symbol on Google maps turned out to be the same. What the hell sort of skewed view of camping do the Brits have? Some nice trailer occupants, moved by our clear distress and confusion, came out and tried to help us figure something out, and suggested a couple nearby farms that typically rented out patches of their grass to tenters. We checked the website for one, called the other, and both were done accepting tents for the season.
After probably 2 hours of trying we had utterly failed to find a human being who would take our money in exchange for a few square meters of flat ground and the use of a toilet. All this on top of our struggle for just a snatch of climbing beta, and a marginal-at-best weather forecast, was too much, so we trashed the climbing plan (and if you know me and Susan, you know how much we *hated* to do that). We had our eye on spending a couple nights at a hostel very close to the Giant's Causeway, and a quick check online showed they had availability if we showed up a couple days earlier than planned. It was about 17 miles away, and at 5 PM now, we'd get most of the way there before sunset. So we said "screw it", booked the dorm beds online, and set out to finish what was to become our longest day of touring. Save us, Finn McCool's Causeway Hostel!
At first we rode a little energized, freshly unburdened by the difficulties of trying to make this climbing plan work. That didn't last long, and by the time we rolled into Bushmills to stock up on groceries for the next three days (there were no markets close to the hostel) we were beat. A bit of profound dread settled in as we finished the ride in the dark, on crushed gravel bike trails that surprisingly appeared next to a golf course, far from any buildings that resembled organized tourist lodging. Yet as we crested the last hill and came down towards a solitary house with the porch lights on, a sign for "Finn McCool's" greeted us and we breathed a sigh of relief. Time to cook a couple frozen pizzas, squeeze into the crowded hostel fridge, and collapse in bed.
The next morning we had to stay in kind of late while the staff changed bedding so that we could switch dorm rooms, but we took the excuse for a slow morning. Just before lunch we set out in beautiful weather, a tad disappointed not to be climbing, but excited to see the Giant's Causeway! Mildly peeved at the steep entry fee for the visitor's center and museum (why do I have to pay that much just so you can try to sell me souvenirs?), we wandered down to the shore and spent nearly two hours exploring the exquisite geology.
Slate grey hexagons neatly tiled a small peninsula leading out the ocean, placed and packed with the care of an expert paver preparing a royal boulevard. A causeway, indeed. There seemed to be two orientations - one where the stones had a convex top that shone bald in the sun, and one where a slight concavity turned them into delicate cups of water. The hexes swelled from seaside to more than 20 feet high, exposing columns that rose to various heights as if the ocean had gotten underneath and the waves pushed them up. The bare columns displayed notches and minor cracks at such regular intervals that they could have been sticks of Pez candy. Lichens adorned some of the taller columns, like gold leaf hammered onto their reddish-brown sides. The waves refreshed tidepools populated with fishes, snails, and bright green to drab olive to deep purple seaweed in shapes from spindly to furry to thick and leafy.
I think I can say it lived up to Susan's childhood fantasies. We followed the trails to a few other rocks of note; the Giant's Boot, which Susan found also made a good bed, and the Organ Pipes, a particularly imposing set of exposed hexagonal columns probably 8 feet in circumference and towering 20 - 25 feet high. Continuing upwards revealed a neat cove with more pillars showing through the eroding slopes, and finally a view of the causeway from above. The high view provided a really neat perspective, showing the sheer number of these hexes that nestled together to make this unique shoreline, and how little clumps of them had broken away to form their own isolated hex-boulders.
We made it back to the hostel before it got too late, which was good because we really needed to figure out where we were going when we left from Belfast again in a few days' time. The weather forecast basically said that all of our options would be cold and damp. We also didn't have time to spare to go any farther north, and the weather there was even worse, so that really limited our climbing options. Feeling exhausted from the constant churn of planning and not having any good options, we turned in for bed. The hostel did have some good guests, though; a guy from Kazakhstan picked up on us practicing Turkish and planted interesting ideas in our heads after he found out were going to visit Erzurum, Turkey, for winter sports, and we started to form some theories on the Dutch women who had emigrated to the UK (mostly, anyway; she lived in the UK, but maintained a Dutch residence and citizenship to keep hold of the swanky social programs and retirement benefits).
The next morning we planned to bike a trail along the rim of the Causeway Coast, ready to get our bikes dirty again with a bit more underbiking, but confident it'd be more fun since we wouldn't have any bags. We started out hesitantly, pushing our bikes up the first small hill and trying to look around without also looking nervous and suspicious, because we thought bikes might be forbidden on the first short section of the trail. But none of the official looking folk stopped us, and since we got an earlier start there weren't nearly as many pedestrians, so we hopped on and started through the rocky dirt and grass trail. I was super grateful for my new knobby tires as I grinded up the slopes while Susan's rear tire kept slipping out.
However, even if no human stopped us, it didn't take long for us to realize that the trail was really not suited for bikes. Problem 1 - stairs, which are really a drag (pun intended) for wheeled vehicles. Problem 2 - many fences and gates, which although less physically strenuous are still quite aggravating. But the views along the ride, while we were high above the naturally decorative coast below, were exquisite; we got to peek into numerous hexagon-tiled and columned coves, nooks, and crannies, and thought about how neat it would be to kayak this coastline. After hoisting our bikes over one last rock wall we passed a stack of rocks that you wouldn't know used to be a castle except for the sign, and then the trail descended towards the ocean, more neat tidepools, and Dunseverick Falls.
Here we rejoined the road and continued biking towards Whitepark Bay, stopping at a pleasant cafe to warm up from the gray and humid day (the UK does have an outstanding number of nice places to stop for tea, coffee, and biscuits, and we found nearly all of them excellent). In Whitepark Bay we walked along the beach and then did some scrambling and poking around the coastal arches, caves, and alcoves.
Back at the hostel we spent more time being sad about the options the combination of weather forecast, camping opportunities, and climbing opportunities left us with, and settled on some half-baked ideas about posting up in the Peak District for five days or so. It didn't feel great, but the planning was more exhausting than the biking and it left us with enough of a sense of certainty to at least go to bed. More conversations with the Dutch woman revealed that, though she was very kind to us (even inviting us to pitch a tent in her garden), she was probably something of a right-wing nutjob in her home country, complaining about Canadian death panels giving euthanasia to teenagers and how she needed to reclaim her sovereignty via a letter to the Dutch royalty so that the government would stop making money by selling her birth certificate. Finn McCool's certainly wasn't our favorite hostel, but the cast of characters helped make it worth it.
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