Carrick-a-rede

Travelling north from Belfast up to the coast of county Antrim, we drove through some really beautiful countryside. Our failure to find the motorway (ok, my failure, I had the map!) turned out to be a happy accident as we stumbled into one of the biggest lakes in Ireland with the most incredible bird life around it, Lough Neagh. The coast turned out to be pretty spectacular as well. We stopped for a bit in Ballycastle, and thought about staying the night there, but decided to drive on to Carrick-a-rede rope bridge. The bridge spans a small gorge that's about 80 feet deep, but the bridge that is there now is a far cry from the old one-rope-rail bridge there before. Fishermen used to catch salmon from the bridge. The views from that area are pretty spectacular. It's hard to get an idea of how high the bridge is from these photos, but hopefully they give somewhat of a representation. James did a better job than I did with the depth perception on the camera. There's a photo I took while we were waiting to cross of others crossing so you could get an idea as well. It's pretty stable, but the closer you get to the ends the more it bounces, just from sheer weight and movement of people on it. But the sides are high (for us short people anyway) and there are wooden planks across the bottom, so it's really secure.