The 16 Most Beautiful Natural Features in the UK

By: FERNE ARFIN | Pulished on 2023-12-05

The Giant's Causeway

The 16 Most Beautiful Natural Features in the UK-Trip Advise

The Giant's Causeway, near Bushmills on the North coast of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, isn't man made. It's not even upgraded or maintained by rock gardeners who come out when everyone is gone to tidy things up. The causeway, looking like a roadway into North Atlantic, is made of about 40,000 interlocking, hexagonal basalt columns, some more than 12 meters high. They are the remnants of an ancient volcanic lava glow, frozen in time. The tops of the columns form stepping stones, mostly hexagonal (six-sided) but also with four, five, seven and eight sides, leading from the foot of a cliff into the sea.

 

The Giant's Causeway was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, and a National Nature Reserve in 1987. Today it is owned and managed by the National Trust.

If you plan to visit, do keep in mind that reasonable mobility and fitness is required to walk on the causeway. There is, however, a new and accessible National Trust visitors' center. In 2013 it was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize in architecture.  The visitor center is one kilometer from the Causeway, It's not visible from the site so its wild aspect, like a harsh backdrop for some moody Game of Thrones scenes, is maintained. Interestingly, a lot of the area around the Giant's Causeway - caves, beaches, forests - was used in the television saga but the causeway itself has never made the cut.

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