Day 7 of our WISE motorcycle tour in September 2013 and we had a ride-out planned to take in the Giant’s Causeway and the Antrim Coastline. Unfortunately the weather was not promising to be great, however, we got lucky for the morning and our visit to the Causeway with the rain not rolling in off the sea until midday.
We arrived around 9.45am and had a good welcome from the car park attendant, whilst there is no specific motorcycle parking, there is plenty of space and their only request was to park 3 bikes to a bay. The Visitors Centre is very impressive but we felt quite expensive at £8.50 per person and this price does not include the bus you can take down to the Causeway itself (extra £2 for that!), and make note that if you are ever visiting and you just want to just use the cafe rather than do the whole visit, you would still have to pay the £8.50 entry fee!!!
All of that said, the Giant’s Causeway is impressive and ever changing with the weather conditions. You are given an audio guide to help you along the way, the narrator tells the story of the Giant very well albeit somewhat “tongue in cheek”. You do have to let your imagination take over when it comes to the rocks which represent the Camel and the Giant’s boot he left behind… 🙂 The walks along the Causeway are good and had the weather been better we would probably have spent longer here but at 12 noon the promised rain came rolling in off the sea and that was that for the remainder of the day – so much so that we had to cancel our planned ride along the Antrim Coast and divert inland instead to visit Joey Dunlop’s Bar in Ballymoney.
We had hoped to grab a bite to eat there but they were not serving food, but the coffee was good and the bar itself is well worth a visit. Only a very short walk from the bar is the Memorial Garden to both Joey and Robert Dunlop and even in the pouring rain it was a good place to visit.
The bar is packed full of memorabilia – even a bike hanging from the ceiling as pictured here. It was a great place to take shelter from the rain and we would recommend a visit there.
Sadly our motorcycle riding planned for the rest of the day also had to be curtailed due to the continuing rain but we were not deterred and instead took our clients to visit the Bushmills Distillery – unfortunately half way around the tour there the alarms went off and everyone had to pile outside back into the pouring rain for half an hour whilst they sorted things out!!!! The wee dram given at the end of the tour was a welcome warm up and was a good end to what had turned out to not be one of the best days to be out on a motorbike……
We moved onto Scotland the following day – would that improve on the weather front?????