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RDS Members' Trip to the Giant's Causeway

Posted by Susan (Members' Events Coordinator) 24 May 2010 at 17:00

On Saturday, April 24, a group of RDS Members led by Drs Chris Nicholas and Claire Mulhall (geologists) headed for the Antrim coast to spend two days learning about the history of the area and to be amazed by a history which is measured in units of a million years as a basic measurement of time.

The Giant’s Causeway was our goal – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. If I were to say that the whole experience was fascinating – that would not quite catch the feeling. You knew that you were looking at something that was in a sense, ageless. Everyone on the trip was caught up in the wonder of these rock formations which were old a million years ago.

As RDS Members, we were in a sense, part of the story of its story. In 1740, an unknown artist by the name of Susanna Drury was awarded a Premium or prize by the Dublin Society (now known as the Royal Dublin Society, the RDS), for her paintings of the Giant’s Causeway. Her impression of the Giant’s Causeway, while verging on the romantic, (having added some non-existent cliffs beyond the headland), is a fairly true image of the Giant’s Causeway as it is today.  In the wonderful booklet which Chris and Claire put together for us (now available from the RDS Library), there were amongst all the scientific images, several old prints from the 18^th century which would have been drawn to accompany scientific texts.

We visited Dunluce Castle and the Portrush Sill (an area of rocks situated at the seafront in Portrush) on our second day. Dunluce Castle was extremely recent in that instead of being 55 million years old, it was just a blow-in built in the 14^th century, having a rich and vibrant history.

How do you end a trip like that? Well, one idea is to tour the Old Bushmills Distillery close by, the oldest whiskey distillery in Ireland, established in 1608. It brought our trip to a fine conclusion and with a dram of whiskey for each one of us at the end of the tour we all set off for the road back to Dublin.

Both Chris and Claire are already planning our 2011 trip to see some more wondrous rocks! Maybe it’s good to think about rock formation in a frenetically paced world. Important things take time and there is lots of it….  

Check out our Giant's Causeway Trip Gallery