we started this day with a visit to one of the three sandy beaches in portrush, namely white rocks[001-018] bay. as it was sunday, some people also had the same idea and took a stroll on the beach, were walking their dogs, or were waiting for the flood[002], so they can kayak. the beach really is beautiful, especially with the patterns[008-010] and the reflections[005] in the sand, the little littoral caves[014-015] that got eroded by the sea over time, and the sound of the waves and wind. just the perfect place for relaxing sunday walks. then we drove to dunluce castle[019-058]. hey, guess what... yes, it was used for the pyke of the greyjoy clan in game of thrones. now that came as a surprise, did it not. but to be fair, this really is an impressive castle, and also we were quite lucky with the weather and scaffoldings. it was built in the early 17th century on top of a castle from the 13th century. the castle itself is only accessible by one bridge[033], and has extremely steep drops on all sides - perfect for defence. while the castle was still occupied, a large part of the kitchen collapsed into the sea, and from the whole kitchen staff only a boy survived, as he was sitting in a corner of the kitchen that did not fall into the sea. after that the owner's wife refused to life there any longer. since that the castle was uninhabited and started to deteriorate. as a consequence the north wall collapsed into the sea too in the 18th century. then it was time to return to the giant's causeway[059-114] again. if you ever happen to go there, be advised that there is no need to pay for the parking, nor for the entrance. free parking lots were enough in the vicinity, and you only had to pay an entrance fee if you entered through the visitor centre, which you can easily, and legally bypass - tim gave us this tip yesterday. legend has it, that an irish giant was challenged by an scottish giant to fight. so the irish giant started to build the causeway from ireland to scotland. but once the causeway was finished, the irish giant got frightened by the height of the scottish giant, and thus hid. his wife then dressed her husband as a baby and put him in a cradle. once the scottish giant saw the baby, he concluded from the size of the baby, that the father must have been enormous. thus he destroyed the causeway, so the irish giant could not follow him back to scotland. funny thing is, there is a similar place with all those hexagonal basaltic columns at one coast in scotland too, which also stretches out into the sea. so maybe the legend is not so far fetched at all. and since even giants seem to be in need of a house, there might have been one ages ago. but all that is left after millions of years of weathering is the chimney stacks[091-092,​111-112]. we kept on the top of the steep cliff of the causeway coast and did our hike there. the view was amazing, and again, we were pretty the only ones walking there, besides a few runners, people walking their dogs. only a few hikers or tourists were spotted. it is really amazing how you can end up from being in a crowd to being totally alone within a few minutes or hundreds of metres. because at the main attractions there were even more people than yesterday - most likely because it was a nice sunday with sunshine from time to time with average temperatures around 13°C. then it was time to get going to our accommodation for tonight. for this we had to go southward and through belfast. on the way we had a few short stops[115-120], and finally arrived at the old schoolhouse inn in comber. and it literally was an old schoolhouse, with boys and girls wing - we were in the boys wing. at the inn there was also a fancy restaurant. and while we were pretty much underdressed we got some fine dining and an amazingly delicious fish pie. nomnomnom... track for day 05.