The Weekly Margs by Zach Margolis
N is for Northern Ireland
The North remembers
Hi, I hope everybody is healthy and safe this week.
This week, I had a call with a friend who is planning to swim the North Channel, so I spent some time explaining my experience and offering some pointers. Thinking back on the trip reminded me of some of the fun photos I’ve taken on it. I’ve already shared some photos in past issues, but have a few more that I like, so that’s what we’re looking at this week!
The Moat is a small little castle on the top of a hill in the town of Donaghadee, where I stayed. You might think this is a perspective trick, that it’s a large castle on a big hill, very far away, but in reality it’s a small castle not much more than one story tall. I love this photo with the archway kind of pointing to the castle, not quite framing it. While waiting around in Donaghadee, it was fun to go on walks up and around the castle and look down at the harbor.
One of Belfast’s claim to fame is that it’s where the Titanic was built. The city has an entire museum about the Titanic, and it’s got a neat design. One one of the days when I was waiting around for the swim, Mandy and I took a day trip to Belfast. This picture highlights the super interesting texture of the building (see the Wikipedia has a better view of the whole thing).
After my swim, we got to drive all the way to the most north part of Northern Ireland for the Giant’s Causeway. These are naturally occurring basalt columns that happen to form into hexagons and look almost as if they were made by people. The legend behind these is that they were built by a giant in Ireland so that they could go fight another giant in Scotland. Coincidentally, there’s a very similar geological formation in Scotland, which makes the legend more interesting.
It’s a short one this week, thanks for reading!
XOXO,
Margs