It has been said about the Giant's Causeway ... "When the world was molded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been the bit left over - a remnant of chaos." - Thackeray

Long ago it was believed that the strange lunar landscape of the Antrim Coast was the the work of a giant Finn McCool, an Ulster warrior and the commander of the King of Ireland's armies. A number of different legends exist involving this giant and how the causeway came to be; one such legend describes how the giant built the cuaseway so that he could transport his love - a lady giant living on the island of Staffa in the Hebrides, across to his home in Ulster.

The Causeway proper is a mass of basalt columns packed tightly together, the result of volcanic eruption. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear into the sea. Altogether there are about 40,000 stone columns, mostly hexagonal, but some are with four, five, seven, or eight sides. The tallest are about forty feet tall and the solidified lava in the cliffs is ninety feet thick in places. The Causeway Coast was first documented in 1693 and since then it has bee the subject of great controversy concerning the origins of the earth. The site was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986 and a National Nature Reserve in 1987.