Hooray for Northern Ireland!

I had an excellent birthday weekend in Northern Ireland. Friday night Eilish and Phil and I had Chinese take away (excellent) and homemade apple pie (Phil made it) to celebrate. Saturday I rode the train up to Portadown in Northern Ireland where I was met by Joan, one of the doctors from the hospice. She grew up in Northern Ireland and her husband lives in Belfast, so she commutes on weekends. They were kind enough to invite me to come visit them for a weekend, and planned an excellent itinerary for me. Our first stop was the Giants Causeway:
The giant's causeway is an interesting geological phenomenon, a spit of rock composed of hexagonal columns of rock:
According to Irish legend, the Giant's causeway was built by an Irish giant to cross the sea and pick a fight with a Scottish Giant. He arrived in Scotland and realized his opponent (who was taking a nap) was much larger than him, so he hightailed it back to Ireland. When the other giant woke up, he crossed the causeway. The Irish giant's wife saw him coming and dressed the giant up as a baby. When the Scottish giant arrived, she told him he was welcome to wait, but please don't wake the baby. The Scottish giant thought if that was the size of the baby, he had no interest in meeting the Dad, so he returned to Scotland and destroyed the causeway behind him. The other end has been identified somewhere in Scotland. Looking back at the cliffs:
A closeup of the rocks that form the causeway:
As you can see, the weather was a bit gray. But it was the first day of rain since I arrived in Ireland, which is extremely unusual for this time of year, so I'm not complaining. Joan and Owen (her husband) were apologetic though.