A visit to the Giant's Causeway

Geoparks are springing up across the UK like mushrooms. For those not in the know, there are now six including the Wren’s Nest Geopark near Dudley, the Abberley Hills and Malvern Hills Geopark and the North Pennines Geopark. They are areas with great geo… Well, nice rocks.

The idea of a Geopark is that the local community gets together to designate, celebrate and defend beautiful landscapes where local stone enhances the buildings and natural rock gives character to an area. There is no under-minister or Brussels department which decides this. Being a Geopark in itself does not give special status to an area, although they are elegible for European and World Heritage recognition, so stand by for blue plaques in quarries. Of course, good rocks go hand in hand with important sites and tight conservation rules, so it is no surprise that, for instance, the North Pennines Geopark is also the North Pennines Area of Oustanding Natural Beauty.

Prize marrow

The latest one is the Cotswolds Hills Geopark. This prize marrow among Geoparks stretches from Bath in the South to Evesham in the North, and is squeezed between Gloucester and Stroud on one side and Cirencester and Witney on the other. And that is the problem. Suppose on a sunny Sunday morning you think, “Why not visit my local Geopark?”. Either you are already in it, or you don’t need a bloodhound to track it down. These beasts are huge. Now the point is that the Geopark label helps unite specialists and volunteers who can take action to preserve dry stone walls and resist inappropriate intrusion of (inter)nationally sourced stone in old stone buildings. But these people do not need to know that e.g. the Cotswold Hills are a Geopark to know the area is beautiful and needs protecting.

One Giant Leap

One Geopark is rather different. The Giant’s Causeway Geopark near Bushmills in Northern Ireland has been a Geopark for years. Oh, you may know it better as plain old “Giant’s Causeway”. Unlike the other new Geoparks, it is a place you can visit, go for a walk round, and there is a nice pub. Now that’s my kind of Geopark. Giant’s Causeway is undoubtedly a marvel of geological wonder, and richly deserves whatever medals and prizes are awarded to it. It is also very well organised for visitors of all levels of stamina. Most visitors start at the Causaway Visitor Centre and do a short circular walk down to the columns, which, appropriately for a collapsed gigantic causeway to Staffa in Scotland, are at the sea’s edge.

A longer walk Eastward along the top of the cliff gives you a breathtaking panorama, and allows you to see the sheer scale of the basalt formation, which extends for some miles and includes tens of thousands of polygonal columns. You cannot at present do a full circular walk along the cliff top and back along the lower path, as it does not connect up fully, owing to land slips. The full walk from Giant’s Causeway visitor centre to where the cliffs end, at the impressive and ruined Dunseverick Castle, is 10 miles there and back. There is also a road a little way inland from the sea, with a half hourly minibus which means that when you are fed up, you can cut up to the road and return that way. The Causeway Hotel, near the visitor centre, will serve well earned refreshments and tea can also be obtained in the Tea Room in the centre itself. Great places to sit and think up which unsuspecting part of the UK should be the next Geopark…