Room, Please Stop Spinning

The warm up night may have ended later, but this morning my head hurts - which didn't happen yesterday. Oh sweet bus ride, how I can't wait for you...

Tragedy struck the tour yesterday morning: our guide, Phil, had left a fan on inside the bus and, as a consequence, the battery was dead. This meant that, instead of heading on to our first stop of the day, we waited around for an hour waiting for some jumper leads to arrive - this was after the half-hearted attempts to push start it, of course. It was funny as hell to be truthful and, in the end, it actually worked to our advantage as it meant we missed out on the nasty weather that had snuck up on us during the night.

When we were finally underway, our first stop was to the north coast and a place called Carrick-a-Rede - a rickety-looking rope bridge atop some amazing scenery and another massive death-drop. I haven't chickened out on one yet and I wasn't about to start now, so after a nice walk in the sun we arrived - and it was nothing! Okay, I started to worry a little bit once other people hopped on and it started bouncing away, but I made it across (and back) with hardly any panicking.

It was well worth the effort too, giving us a much better view of the coastline we'd just walked along. The ground was also incredibly spongy, it was sort of like walking on a weak trampoline.

Our next stop was Giant's Causeway. Now, there's an old Irish legend associated with this place involving giants and babies and other things, but the most important thing is that this is a National Heritage site and it's a really amazing area. The main area, the actual Causeway itself, is made up from columns of hexagonal rocks erupting from the ground. There's a giant wall of them you can climb up - the rocks double as handy stepping stones - which is, ugh, another great big bloody height I can claim to have conquered.

Around this area are a few other interesting sights to see, including the Giant's Boot, basically, a big ol' rock that looks like, you guessed it, a boot; the 'pipe organ', another collection of rock columns that sort of looks like a pipe organ; as well as more picturesque cliffs and coastline.

By now it was time to head to our next stopover for the next two days, the city of Derry. Checking into the hostel, we all headed down to the recommended eating spot for some food and drinks. And then a few more drinks. Which led to more drinks. It's a vicious spiral.

On urging from Phil, we eventually headed up to a traditional Irish pub, to sample some traditional Irish music and traditional Irish people. Oh, and have a few more drinks - that goes without saying. The pub itself was interesting, its most arresting feature being the pig head hung from the ceiling (Raymond Watts would be proud). It didn't take us long to start mingling with some locals, including a German girl (yes, she was a local!) who proceeded to tell me I looked like Bernard Black. Considering one of the girls on the tour had earlier told me I look like a young Mick Molloy, I considered this new comparison to be a step up.

After a while, we decided to move on to the next place - a night club, this time. Funnily enough, the German girl and her boyfriend tagged along too. By now, we were all quite sauced and having a good time - at which point, Phil started on his favourite trick of grabbing someone camera and going nuts with it. Not just pictures of us, either - anyone in shooting distance, he'd snap them.