Giant Causeway, Northen Ireland

The coastal scenery adjacent to the causeway is some of the most beautiful and awe inspiring that you are likely to find anywhere. The majestic cliffs and inaccessible bays combine with myth and legend to inspire, but look carefully amongst this breathtaking landscape and you will find echoes of another reality, isolated ruins, kelp walls and shoreline fields bear testament to the harder life of subsistence farming and fishing endured by past generations. Dotted around the coast you'll find small sheltered harbours and slipways, fishermen's cottages and rock formations that you will never forget. Many ships have foundered below these towering cliffs but none so tragic as that of the Girona, a galleass of the Spanish Armada. Carrying the crews from two previous Armada shipwrecks, the Girona was on passage from Killybegs and trying to reach the relative safety of Scotland. As she rounded Inishowen peninsula, heavily over laden and in deteriorating sea conditions, her rudder failed. In the teeth of a full blown north-westerly gale, the crew battled to keep her off the coast but she finally struck Lacada Point in view of the Giants Causeway at midnight on October 30th 1588 with the loss of over twelve hundred men. Only five are believed to have survived. Local folklore tell of descendants living here and that victims of the wreck, maybe Spanish nobility, were buried in St. Cuthbert's graveyard near Dunluce Castle, it is known that cannons from the wreck were placed here.