The Giant's Causeway, Now That's What Unique Really Means!

You would think that of all the words in the English language, “unique” would be one of the easiest to define. “Existing as the only one or as the sole example” or perhaps you prefer “having no like or equal”. To my mind these seem perfect definitions of my understanding of the word.

But as is the case in everyday life, the reality is that unique, like so many other words, has been slightly corrupted. Every beautiful landscape view is “unique”, but there are similar examples waiting around every turn particularly if you are touring places such as the Highlands of Scotland, the Lake District or the Snowdonia National Park in Wales.

Each person is “unique”, yet there seem to be an awful lot of us, and don't start me on the advertising industry, where the true definition of unique went out of the window ages ago.

Yet, I was recently watching the eye-catching series of adverts that the Northern Ireland Tourist Board run, and they showed the wonderful Giant's Causeway. Then I realised what the true meaning of unique was.

Comprising up to 40,000 interlocking basalt columns (what a job that must have been to count them!), the Giant's Causeway, or at least the Irish side of it, is to be found in County Antrim on the beautiful north east coast of Northern Ireland. Formed as the result of volcanic action dating back some 50 to 60 million years, the rock formation that we see today would have been formed in very much the same way that mud dries out after heavy rain.

As the lava cooled it created a series of mainly hexagonal columns (although there are also those of four, five, seven and eight sides) that can reach a maximum height of some forty feet and disappear into the sea. The solidified lava can be up to ninety feet thick in places.

Being Ireland, the Causeway is cloaked in legend and myth, some of it involving an Irish warrior named Finn MacCool and his enemy from Scotland, Benandonner. The fact that the Causeway appears to travel under the sea and reappear in slightly lesser form in Fingal's Cave on the Isle of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides, does make you wonder if there could be some truth in the legend.

As tourism became more popular in the nineteenth century, there was a danger that the site would become over commercialised, particularly with construction of the Giant's Causeway Tramway. Thankfully, the National Trust took the site into its care in 1960, and this commercialisation was reduced. A new visitor centre was opened in July 2012, and the Causeway itself is now about half a mile from the entrance to the site.

It is a recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, this being awarded in 1986. A year later it became a National Nature Reserve , and in 2005, it was voted the fourth greatest national wonder in the United Kingdom by the readers of the Radio Times. It is the most popular tourist attraction in Northern Ireland.

Now that's what I call unique!

http://www.northantrim.com/giantscauseway.htm