Andrew & Sarah

The final day of our road trip we head left Portrush and head south along the East coast. The weather today was slightly better than previous days, we even got glimpses of blue sky at times. However there was still a freezing wind all day.

The drive down the east coast took us through many small villages and along the rocky coast line, through Belfast and back to Dublin. We arrived back to the rental car depot around 2:30pm then caught a bus back to Matt and Kats apartment.

From my observations from the road trip i have decided that Ireland is a much older country than NZ with a lot of history and character. There are various landscapes which resemble parts of the NZ countryside.

• My Photo Gallery
• Matt’s Photo Gallery
• Matt’s blog summarising the road trip.

This morning we picked Kat up from the Belfast Railway station. Kat caught the train up from Dublin and is spending the weekend touring the northern part of Ireland with us. We took the M2 motorway out of Belfast and proceeded north until we reached the town of Ballymena.

We decided we would stop in Ballymena for a bite to eat and a coffee. However we we sadly disappointed at the lack of quality cafes. We settled on one which seemed to be the best there was however it was not that stunning. We wandered back through the town then continued driving north.

We reached the northern coast at a town called Ballycastle. From here we followed the coast line to the west. At Carrick-A-Rede there are some impressive cliffs and islands just off the coast. One of these cliffs is connected to the mainland by rope bridge. Unfortunately however they take the bridge down in the winter. We still got a good look at the islands, beach and cliffs. Despite the ‘Authentic Irish Weather’ as Kat put it.

From Carrick-A-Rede we continued along the coast a little bit further to the Gaints Causeway which is an area of about 40,000 interlocking Basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal.

We then decided to visit the Old Bushmills Distillery where they make Old Bushmills Whiskey. We had a late lunch here before starting a tour of the distillery. The tour its self was interesting as we got to see how them make the whiskey in a real working distillery.

From here we continued on to Portrush where we are staying for the night. We checked into the guest house where we are staying then went out to find somewhere for dinner. We picked a restaurant called Coast which served pizzas and pastas mainly. This restaurant got extremely busy while we were them with people coming in and being told there was over an hour wait for a table. The food wasn’t bad and was quite well priced so we couldn’t complain.

Today we left Sligo and headed north east toward Belfast. The weather was once again dull, very windy and rainy. After finding our way out of Sligo we stopped at Glencar Waterfall which is a nice little waterfall which feeds an equally nice lake.

After driving a bit longer it soon became clear we were coming into Northern Ireland, as all the road signs once again changed this time to British road signs. We passed through some very nice although small villages and stopped to take some photos of some old style church’s and castles.

We passed through Enniskillen, Omagh, Cookstown before coming to Ardboe, where we visited an old Abby and the Ardboe High Cross. From here we continued on to the M1 motorway which brought us into Belfast. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Belfast and viewing some of the murals painted on the walls here.

I’m currently writing this blog post while sitting in the restaurant where we had dinner borrowing someones free wifi. The restaurant is the Gourmet Burger Bank. The waiter here proudly told us that gourmet burgers originated in NZ!