Giant’s Causeway, Ireland

The Giant's Causeway is an space of concerning forty,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient eruption. It is also referred to as Clochán associate degree Aifir or Clochán Na bhFomhórach in Irish and tha Giant's Causey in Ulster-Scots.

It is located in County Antrim on the northeast coast of European country, about 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of the city of Bushmills. It was declared a World Heritage Site by United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1986, and a national nature reserve in 1987 by the Department of the Environment for Northern eire. In a 2005 poll of Radio Times readers, the Giant's Causeway was named as the fourth greatest natural wonder within the uk. The tops of the columns type stepping stones that lead from the drop-off foot and disappear beneath the ocean. Most of the columns are polygonal shape, although there area unit conjointly some with four, five, seven or eight sides. The tallest are concerning twelve metres (39 ft) high, and the solidified volcanic rock within the cliffs is twenty eight metres (92 ft) thick in places.

Much of the Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast World Heritage web site is nowadays closely-held and managed by the National Trust and it's one in every of the foremost widespread traveller attractions in European country. The remainder of the location is owned by the Crown Estate and variety of personal landowners.

Geology

Around 50 to sixty million years past, during the epoch Epoch, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity, when extremely fluid liquified volcanic rock intruded through chalk beds to type an intensive volcanic rock tableland. Horizontal contraction fractured in a similar thanks to drying mud, with the cracks propagating down as the pile cooled, leaving pillarlike structures, which area unit conjointly broken horizontally into "biscuits". The extensive fracture network created the distinctive columns seen nowadays. The basalts were originally part of a good volcanic tableland referred to as the Thulean tableland that fashioned throughout the epoch.