Giant's Causeway
The Giant's Causeway (English for, Giant's Causeway ', Irish Clochán to Aifir ) is located on the northern coast of County Antrim in Northern Ireland, east of the small town of Bushmills about 80 miles from Belfast.
UNESCO is one of the Giant's Causeway World Heritage Site. It consists of about 40,000 evenly shaped basalt columns that have an age of about 60 million years ago. About half of the columns have a hexagonal cross-section, but also occur in those with four, five, seven, or eight corners. The largest of the stone columns have a height of twelve meters. The rock layer is thick up to 25 m. The Giant's Causeway leads about five kilometers along the cliffs and ends in the sea, what he is again - the old legend of Fionn mac Cumhaill According - shows up on the Scottish coast as Fingal 's Cave. Geologists lead the creation of the basalt dam back to the cooling of hot lava. Vertical columnar basalt formations can occur with very slow and uniform cooling of lava. The pillar structure thereby forms from slowly into running into the material stress cracks. These are caused by the cooling and contraction of the material and spread perpendicular to the cooling surface. The volcano, whose lava led to the formation of the Giant's Causeway, is now worn away by erosion.
One of Irish legend, the dam of the giant Fionn mac Cumhaill was built. It is said that Fionn was one day so much offended by his Scottish opponent Benandonner that he decided to build this dam to defeat Benandonner in a duel. He tore out huge rocks from the cliffs of the coast and pushed it into the ocean to build a safe way to Scotland. When he was done with the building, he called Benandonner out to fight. In order not to lose his reputation, this had no choice but to accept the challenge, and so he made his way to the island of Ireland. Fionn, the work had tired of the dam and exhausted, meanwhile, was looking for a way out, as he could recover before the clash with the Scottish giants. He disguised himself as a baby and then waited with his wife on the arrival Benandonners. When he appeared, Fionn's wife insisted that he was not just there. At the same time she invited him in for tea and promised Fionn 'll come back soon. As Benandonner while waiting the alleged baby looked, he turned pale at the thought that when the size of the child's father must have really gigantic proportions. Fear gripped him and he ran over the dam back to Scotland and destroyed it while behind.