ZigZag Wanderer

Monday 8th September 2025

A fine morning greeted us at Glenarm, but we were ready to trek northwest towards the Causeway. What a beautiful road the Causeway Coast Road is too. Sweeping panoramas across the sea as far as Scotland again. Twists and turns. Cliffs and glens. It has it all.

Reaching The Giant’s Causeway itself, you’re faced with a choice of a long walk to the area (possibly from Bushmills) or a rather hefty charge for the NT visitor centre – or a slightly lesser one from a nearby car park. We chose the latter.

It’s still a fair walk from there, but very doable.

Look how happy she is to see her pile of rocks at last

I don’t know how long it took to lay all those blocks, but whoever did it deserved their bonuses. I can’t believe Finn/Fionn did it all on his lonesome, even if he was very big-boned.

There’s a lot of it too…

We finished with a well deserved coffee at the Causeway Hotel after the mostly uphill tab back out.

M’s next agenda item was to visit her ancestral home, not far away – Dunluce Castle. I think she had plans to move in, but changed her mind when she saw the state the last residents had left it in. Tch.

A few tiles short of a roof.

From there, we kept the coast to our right as far as possible passing through Portrush and Portstewart but were forced to turn inland for several miles to skirt Coleraine and cross the River Bann there before heading north again towards tonight’s park-up at Castlerock.

Once again, it’s not exactly Blackpool (thank the Lord) but it’s pleasant enough, and has an absolutely beautiful soft-sandy beach that goes on and on. Lacy had a ball.

The park-up is not the prettiest as it’s just a small car park at the entrance to the Black Glen. It overlooks a caravan park, sadly, but at least there’s a sea view over the top of the sea of aluminium.

It’ll do for the night, however, and certainly seems quiet enough.

It’s pretty chilly though, under the clear sky. Autumn’s just around the headland (so’s Eire!) so it’s heating switched-on and shut-up-shop time.

Tuesday 9th September 2025

Cool and dull, with a few spots of H2O. Nothing like enough to dampen the follicles though.

It was a very quiet night again. I’m beginning to wonder where the youth of Ireland do their doughnuts and boom-boom music – but complain I not.

We set off at around 11, heading for Derry’s bypass road that cuts across the mighty Foyle River (and it really is wide just there) at the foot end of what I take to be the second largest lough. First stop; Muff, right on the border just north of Derry, for fuel and coffee at the very well appointed Spar. Perhaps we should’ve filled the tank in NI, as I think it’s cheaper there, but I haven’t worked the conversion. I probably won’t either, as it’s done now.

Next stop – at the other end of the Inishowen peninsula – Malin Head. Northernmost point of Ireland, and the beginning (or indeed end) of the Wild Atlantic Way.

That’s what it says (you can just pick out the van in the background).

We’d originally intended to pick up the WAW a bit further down, but we kinda accidentally ended up here, so it’s nice to be able to do the whole thing, from here to Cork-way.

We’ll also take in Mizen Head (brings back great memories of a wonderful holiday around those parts when the girls were young) thus completing the North-South traverse of the island.

View from the Head

A quick sandwich lunch in the van later, and we were off back the way we came, right-turning just south of Malin village, en-route to Tullagh Bay beach for another very wild park-up overlooking the whole length of this beautiful strand. Surrounded by mountains and crashing waves just feet away, it’s pretty perfect here..

One thing. Having returned to the Republic, we’ve once again lost the use of our cheapo tracker, which relies on a 2g signal. Guess what? EE have already shut down their 2g service here, so that’s done for that.

Oh well; just Polar Steps routes from now on then… Poor show. Sorry!