OCTOBER 2024
It is very likely that when you are planning to visit Northern Ireland, you are also planning to bring a visit to The Dark Hedges & the Giant’s Causeway. The Dark Hedges found fame through Game of Thrones, I am not a watcher myself but still found The Dark Hedges absolutely beautiful. The Giant’s Causeway was the highlight of our (Northern) Ireland trip. These activities are definitely not the most original, but if you take the right pre-cautions you are going to enjoy them a lot.
The Dark Hedges
The Dark Hedges is a car-free lane of trees that found fame through Game of Thrones. Apparently there used to be more trees, as some have passed away, but it still matched my expectations. I actually found that some vantage points looked exactly like the pictures, which isn’t always the case when it comes to popular Instagram locations. You can park your car at the Dark Hedges Estate for a small fee and then walk over to The Dark Hedges. Even tour buses stop here and it can get really crowded during the day. To escape the crowds we visited at around 6PM, the light was quite good during summer. There were definitely a lot of people, but with some patience it was possible to take pictures and videos. We spent less than one hour at The Dark Hedges, including finding a parking spot, but I definitely enjoyed these beautiful trees!
The Giant’s Causeway
The Giant’s Causeway is one of the most popular activities in Northern Ireland and for good reason: it is absolutely stunning! The Giant’s Causeway is managed and maintained by the National Trust and if you are a member you can visit for free, including parking in the main parking lot. We read lots of horror stories with regard to the parking at Giant’s Causeway, but we found that these stories were really exaggerated. If you want to use the main car park, you seem obligated to buy tickets for the visitor’s center.
We therefore used the Causeway Coast Way Car Park, this costs 10 pounds to park your car for the day and it is really close to the hiking paths to the Giant’s Causeway. As we were traveling with a camper van we were able to park our van the night before the visit, stay there for free, and pay 10 pounds the next day with the pay-by-phone system. This even gives you the opportunity to visit on two consecutive days. The car park does fill up, but if you arrive before 11AM you should be fine with finding a spot.
The Giant’s Causeway was one of the activities that I was most excited about, and the number one activity which made me wanna get up early. We took the red route over the cliffs down to the beach where you will find the Giant’s Causeway. I loved this entrance route because you can see it first from a high vantage point, before you can experience the basalt columns and climb on them. We spent about 2-3 hours enjoying the hikes, views and taking pictures.
You are actually allowed to climb the basalt columns, there are no obstructions, so you can also jump in the water if you like. This meant that it was Hugo’s favorite activity of the trip, he found that the basalt columns looked like pancakes and was constantly climbing! Unfortunately we had didn’t see that we had the wrong camera settings and our pictures turned out dark. I had to manipulate this a bit, which is why the pictures are not super sharp. I hope you can still see that it is a very special phenomenon! It didn’t get busy until 10AM, so definitely come early if you want to take lots of pictures.
From the Giant’s Causeway you can do a small hike to the Amphitheatre Viewpoint – End of the cliffwalk. You will pass some red rock formations and get stunning views from the other side. Highly advised to add this 30 minute walk there and back.
