Original subtitles

Right across our planet, there is an incredible variety of astonishing

landscapes.

One of the most beautiful anywhere in the world is Northern Ireland's Causeway

Coast.

Piles of breathtaking cliffs arising from the sea.

A coastline of wonders that has stood here for millions of years before

walked this coast.

Two fragments of dinosaur bone have been found here at the Gobbins in these

Jurassic clades, and these are the only dinosaurs known from anywhere in

Ireland.

This coastline boasts some of the most extraordinary natural phenomena

These incredible stepping stones, which they really almost don't look natural.

They look like something man -made by a giant with a hammer and a chisel.

And an abundant array of species have blossomed here.

When you look around, the scenery, the people, the heritage, the glances are

part of my DNA.

We're going to take you on a journey along the Irish Causeway Coast to

admire its wonders and discover

its secrets.

Our journey begins at the great city of Londonderry, or Derry, on the north

coast of Northern Ireland.

The city sits on the calm waters of Loch Foyle, but seafarers have a route

through a narrow passage straight out to the wilds of the Atlantic Ocean.

Viewed from space, The unusual shape of the lock is striking.

Almost fully encircled by land, it has a tiny opening leading into the North

Atlantic Sea at the top of the estuary.

Our journey takes us east along one of the most incredible coastlines anywhere.

Rare birds relish this landscape, like the black -tailed godwit and the

cormorant, a diving bird who feeds off these shores.

From Loch Foyle, the earth rises steeply upwards.

It's our first sight of the great rock formations that shape the whole

of Northern Ireland.

the aftermath of a series of great volcanic eruptions that we know by the

prosaic name of the Antrim Plateau.

And the first great peak, rising 400 metres above the sea, is Mount Benevena.

On a clear day, there are spectacular panoramic views from here for miles.

down to the peninsula of the McGilligan Point and across to Donegal Beyond.

Benevena is a special area of conservation and has been recognised for

coniferous juniper trees and a unique assemblage of arctic alpine plants.

The summit's hard impermeable rock is perfect for retaining water and a lake

formed, the ideal habitat for trout.

From Benevena's lookout point, Downhill House and Mussenden Temple stand out on

the coast below.

Built in 1780 for the Bishop of Derry, the house and temple are perched on the

edge of this exposed headland.

But the estate suffered a devastating fire in 1851, and the landscape here has

almost engulfed it.

The temple once served as a library for the bishop's niece.

But today it looks certain to tumble down the cliffs and into the sea.

What awaits us only a little further east along the coast is a natural

phenomenon that seems to come from a vividly imagined dream.

A place that has captured the imagination of everyone who sees it.

for many centuries past.

We know it today by its mythological name, the Giant's Causeway.

The sheer strangeness of this place defies belief.

Writer Lolly Spence has found that an interest in the Giant's Causeway has

into more of an obsession.

She finds herself returning here again and again.

I have grown up and lived and worked in Northern Ireland all my life.

My mother's family came across from Scotland to live on the Antrim coast,

over the water behind us here.

And this Antrim coast road has really been part of my upbringing.

800 miles to the north, we have Iceland.

2 ,000 miles to the west, we have Newfoundland. And under these cliffs, at

edge of the world, we're looking at, on the very north coast of Ireland, is the

Great Antrim Plateau, a huge basalt landscape crashing into the North

Atlantic Ocean here.

Giants collide, this massive volcanic land mass hitting the mighty waters of

Atlantic Ocean.

And it almost slides away, this honeycomb of rock, this basalt pavement

under the waters of the Atlantic.

This causeway never looks the same twice.

I have been the only person here. I have been here with thousands of tourists.

I've been here in the winter when the rainwater had frozen in the cavities and

the rocks when it was really cold.

And I have been here in glorious sunshine.

And of course on a day like this.

Even the rain here feels fresher and cleaner, certainly wetter.

Viewed from above, the Giant's Causeway is like a finger jutting straight out

from the shoreline into the sea.

It was formed by a volcanic eruption 60 million years ago.

And a fascination around their formation has brought tourists and scientists

flocking to this area for generations.

It all began in the Palaeogene period over 20 million years ago.

The molten lava rolls up through those fissures and spread out to make an

enormous lava lake.

Then over time, this slowed, it slowly cooled.

And as it cooled, you think of a puddle at the side of the road, just a puddle

of rainwater.

And as that dries out, you see the mud in it beginning to crack itself. You

the cracked mud in a puddle? Well, here this happened on a larger, longer scale.

The lava cooled over decades and millennia. And as it cooled, it shrank.

And because it cools so slowly and so regularly, it formed these columns.

These incredible stepping stones, which they really almost don't look natural.

They look like something man -made by a giant with a hammer and a chisel.

Its wondrous hexagonal formations here gave rise to a rich mythological

explanation of its origins.

Everything. about this place is colossal in scale.

And as we walk into this giant amphitheater with giant cliff tops and

waves, it makes us, of course, wonder about the old myth of who it was that

actually built this.

Ireland is full of myths and legends.

And one of our most famous giants is Finn McCool, the mighty warrior.

of the Celtic tail.

Finn McCool had one enemy in all of the world, the Scottish giant, Ben Andona,

the Mountain of Thunder.

These two giants, challenging each other to a fight, couldn't get at each other

because of the might you see.

And so both giants set to, to make a causeway.

The legend continues about how one day Finn McCool was taking a rest from his

labours. His wife Una, looking through the window, spotted the Scottish giant

drawing near. He had finished the causeway. He was much bigger than her

She knew for sure that he would defeat Finn McCool in any combat.

And so Una called Finn into the house. She said, Finn.

I want you to get into that cradle. I want you to pretend to be a baby with

thumb in your mouth.

Our legend says when Ben and Donna looked into that cradle and saw the size

Finn McCool's baby, as he thought, with its truly formed beard and its enormous

size... He thought, I'm not staying around to fight the father of a baby

this. And carrying back to Scotland, he was in such a hurry that he left his

boot on the shore, where we can still see the giant's boot over there.

He tore up the causeway behind him for fear that Finn McCool would follow.

Everything about this place was just on a giant scale.

The giant honeycomb stepping stones, the giant waves crashing.

It was a place of inspiration to modern writers, people like our own Seamus

Heaney, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He loved the giant causeway

was very much inspired by this landscape on the north of Antrim.

For some Irish people, the Giant's Causeway is simply the eighth wonder of

world.

But it's only the first of the wonders of the Causeway Coast.

Its islands and seas have their own fascinating stories to tell.

From the Giant's Causeway, three miles of cliffs and coves lead us to the mouth

of the River Bush, whose tributary provides

an ideal sweet water supply for whiskey -making on the Antrim coast.

Just off this coast is Carrica Reed, a tiny uninhabited island.

There are no people, but from time immemorial, there have been countless

thousands of fish.

Centuries ago, fishermen built a rope bridge to reach the rich stocks of

travelling from the Atlantic and returning home here to the river's bush

band to spawn.

And the bridge, rebuilt and strengthened, remains to this day, even

salmon population, victims of overfishing and pollution, has dwindled

nothing.

A larger island, big enough to be inhabited, sits just north of the

coast, only six miles from the shoreline.

Here, viewed from above the Mull of Kintyre, the edge of Scotland seems to

almost reach out and touch its near neighbour.

We're heading to the island shores, home to 150 people and tens of

thousands of creatures of the sea.

One person who has made the journey across this stretch of water all his

life. He's Richard Lafferty.

Richard ferries the island's residents and curious visitors to and fro.

For him, the seas around Rathlin Island with their long history are like a

second home.

That's a fantastic place for the wildlife.

The islanders now survive on the island by a bit of tourism, fishing.

And also now they've got a kelp farm where they harvest seaweed and people

that now for food.

And the island over the years has been very famous for its smuggling.

People over the years have travelled and always have had to pass it. So the

Vikings have been here, the English have been here, obviously the Irish, the

Scots. And many a battle has been fought on the island.

At this small stretch of water, which he must cross, the force of the Atlantic

Ocean is pressed through a sea passage only six miles wide.

And what we have is we have the whole Irish Sea emptying and the Atlantic

coming in when the tides change.

That over the years has caused a lot of problems for mariners.

We've got wrecks from every era.

And some of the most famous wrecks are some of our war wrecks.

In one day alone, a German U -boat sunk three British warships in this Rathland

Sound.

We have two British warships just sitting here now about half a mile to

north of us.

The most famous sea wreck happened several hundred years earlier.

Lagerona was dashed on the Causeway's Rocks in 1588.

The ship was part of the Spanish Armada, who were fleeing the English fleet.

Over 1 ,300 men lost their lives, making it the biggest shipwreck disaster

Ireland or Spain has ever seen.

Just nine sailors survived and scrambled ashore at Dunluce Castle.

helped by the members of the ruling MacDonald clan.

Legend has it that they raided the ship's washed -up booty using the

rebuild their castle.

La Llorona lay at the bottom of the ocean for 400 years, but in 1967, the

remainder of the ship's hoard of gold was discovered by divers in these

treacherous waters.

Rattle -in -sounds waters may be perilous for humans, but wildlife is

at home here.

The ocean currents, certain times of year, the water's thick with plankton,

that plankton is a food for marine creatures.

The island's wild, it's spectacular.

The marine life on it's intense, bird life, fish life, corals.

We're lucky enough that we will see the bastion shark. They're feeding the

plankton generally near the surface.

It can be up to about seven, eight, nine meters long and two or three meters

wide. So not as big as this boat, but not far off it. But a really impressive

creature to see in our water.

You never know what you're going to see. There's some fantastic interactions

with the dolphins, whales and bird life.

Rathlin Island's 70 -metre -high basalt cliffs are home to Northern Ireland's

biggest colony of breeding seabirds, including the kittiwake, a

gull named after her bird call.

Because of their remote nesting areas,

their young are one of the few chicks that are white at birth, as they don't

require camouflage.

like the chicks of more vulnerable species.

Their young instinctively know to stay still so they don't fall to certain

on the rocks below their cliffside nest.

Among the thronging masses of birdlife on Rathlin are the puffins.

who arrive like clockwork in March each year for the breeding season.

Puffins usually lay just one egg per season, choosing the same mate.

The puffins' chatter on rattling dominates the cliffs.

Whilst at sea, they remain perfectly silent.

Also enjoying the coves of Ratlin at low tide are the seals.

The island has a population of up to 1 ,500 grey and harbour seals.

But they are not the only creatures to take refuge on Ratlin.

In 1306, Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, is said to have retreated to a

Ratlin after being defeated by the English.

Legend has it that observing an industrious spider here inspired him to

to Scotland and fight for independence.

And today these legends have been replaced by fantasy through the famous

series filmed around the Causeway Coast.

This whole area is famous for the Game of Thrones scene. And we've got quite a

few sites that have been made famous by this series.

For example, behind us we've got Dragonstone, where Jon Snow pitted the

for the first time here at Fairhead.

And we've got Slaver's Bay in Murloc Bay.

Why does Game of Thrones come here? Because they have such diverse geology,

fantastic backdrops to the scenes.

Other local places lend their atmosphere and history to the filming.

Like the dark hedges of Amoy, a road flanked by 150 beech

trees, planted to provide a grand pathway to a local mansion.

Local legend has it that the hedges are haunted by a grey lady.

As we travel south along Northern Ireland's causeway coast, we're going to

tempted inland by the sight of a gentle rise in the land known as Knockdew.

But this is no naturally occurring hill.

It's a Bronze Age fort, which dates to around 2000 BC.

A series of massive earthworks, three banks, and dishes running for 300 meters

and protecting the approaches.

Excavations reveal the structures of round houses inside the fort.

A community must have lived here for hundreds of years, up on the hills, even

during the ravages of winter.

4 ,000 years ago, the inhabitants would have braved the fierce Atlantic winds

from this lookout point, protecting their homestead.

We head inland on the wings of the endangered Hen Harrier, whose population

in the Antrim Hills has dwindled by 80%. He flies above the

Antrim Plateau, an exposed and desolate landscape.

which has its own wild beauty.

The male hen harrier, with its distinctive white rump,

provides food for the female.

He settles at his stronghold.

on the 800 metre long and 200 metre wide Slemish Mountain, making his nest on

the ground amongst the heather.

Slemish is Northern Ireland's largest volcanic plug, or lava neck,

formed when magna hardened right at the volcano's vent.

the resulting dolerite rock is harder than the rock that surrounds it, which

why Flemish has not been eroded by glaciers.

According to legend, it was the first known Irish home of St. Patrick, who was

enslaved here as a boy working as a shepherd.

He is said to have found religious faith on Flemish and the mountain, is now a

place of pilgrimage.

Seen from space, just south of Slemish, another great landmark appears.

Like a gigantic splat of ink, Loch Nei sits in the center of the Antrim

Formed 60 million years ago after volcanic eruptions ceased, and the

crust lowly sagged.

Loch Ness' 115 square miles of fresh water make it the biggest lake in the

British Isles.

Staying inland, we're heading north to the Valley of Glenariff, known as the

Queen of the Antrim Glens.

It's just one of the nine valleys which crisscross over the Anthem Plateau,

leaving a blanket of green flanking the causeway coast.

Before the coast road was built here in the 1830s, the glens were isolated from

the rest of the country, and it was easier to travel here by sea.

So a strategically placed fort was needed to protect the glen shores.

and the fertile land surrounding it from Scottish invaders.

John Robin is a local historian and direct descendant of the glensmen who

ploughed this fertile land over 400 years ago.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, there was a heavy influx of Scottish

settlers here due to this coast's proximity to Scotland.

resulting in an affinity between the two countries that still felt today.

I come from a long line of Glen's men, and I am proud to call myself a Glen's

man.

And the first mention of my name in the Glen's was in 1652.

We are a mere 15 miles from the Scottish coast. We can clearly see the Mullifcan

Tyre and the Scottish mainland from here.

And it's basically so close that it's no wonder that we were all part of the

same kingdom for many, many hundreds of years, the kingdom of Dalriada.

This site of Red Bay Castle is said to have been used by the 5th century

kingdom, who ruled parts of early Celtic Ireland from mainland Scotland.

What's left of the castle today is 16th century.

The castle itself withstood many sieges during its time. One of the most famous

was in 1565 when Shane O 'Neill, a warlord from Mid Ulster, at the

behest of Queen Elizabeth I, decided that he was going to oust the Macdonalds

from the area.

He came down through Glen Arras, he burned everything, he sacked the castle,

took two of the main Macdonalds prisoners.

The McDonalds won their castle back and rebuilt it from the local stone.

Well, you can see that there are two types of stone here.

One is the red sandstone. You can see how red it actually is.

And then you've got the basalt.

The basalt will be harder.

There's a good basalt there.

But no matter how hard the stone was, the castle couldn't withstand...

the bombardment by Cromwellian forces in the 1650s, which left us with the ruins

that we have today.

In retaliation against the 17th century Catholic rebellion, Oliver Cromwell led

a brutal conquest of Ireland, destroying the native landowning classes and

replacing them with colonists from the mainland.

Today's landscape has experienced layers of geological history over millions of

years. But it was just 20 ,000 years ago that it was engulfed during the Ice

Age.

At the end of this period, the corries, or V -shaped gaps between the hills,

were smothered in ice.

But as the glaciers thawed, they moved towards the sea.

taking land with them and flattening the gaps to form a perfect U -shaped valley

with an unspoilt sandy beach at the foot of the glen.

Glenarriff Beach is a conservation area, backed by sand dunes, home to the

yellow rattleflower, named after the sound it makes as its seeds shake in the

wind from the Irish Sea.

Of the nine glens radiating off the Antrim coast, Glen Arif is both the

and deepest.

And today, it's a haven for wildlife.

Heron, kingfisher, and cormorant will travel to the forest glen from their

coastal roosts to fish on inland waterways here.

The buzzard has made a stunning comeback to the glens too.

Despite severe persecution and pesticide poisoning, successful conservation at

Glen Arif means he can flourish here on the rich hunting ground of small mammals

and amphibians.

Also soaring above the glen is the peregrine falcon.

whose population is still recovering in Ireland from devastating declines in the

1960s.

The peregrine falcon is the fastest bird in the world and can strike his prey in

a stoop dive at speeds of over 180 miles per hour.

Glenara means everything to me.

When you look around, the scenery, the people, the heritage, my ancestry,

I just feel as if the glens are part of my DNA.

You'll probably notice the colour of the water.

Very dark black.

That is because it is running off the peak of the uplands and it turns it

almost Coca -Cola colour.

And that comes from the water running off the peak which is in the uplands

above, soaking through the blanket fog.

Well, one of the best... Known animals that would frequent the river here would

be otters.

We have quite a healthy population and that is a sign that the water is of very

pure quality.

This is a hazy backwater.

in the summertime sun beating through the trees the water vapor cool

at its heaven on earth

we've

journeyed from the city of londonderry right around northern ireland's

and find ourselves at the eastern side of the Antrim Plateau.

Looking down from space, we see the strange shape of Island Magee, looking

rather like an elephant's tail drooping into the Irish Sea.

And at the southern end of this peninsula is a place where much of the

extraordinary story of the geology of this landscape was discovered.

It's called The Gobbins.

Its dramatic appearance is only half the story, for The Gobbins has plenty else

to tell us.

Dr Mike Sims is a geologist based here in Northern Ireland.

For him, it's this place that holds the key to the land he lives in.

It's an amazing place to come and actually look at some of the geology,

the rocks that make up the landscape along the Antrim coast.

144 million years ago, the whole of Ireland was submerged in a warm sea in

white limestone was deposited and can be seen in the cliffs of the Causeway

Coast today.

But at the Gobbins, that chalk was overridden by huge fissures opening up

Earth's surface.

Go back 60 million years, which is how old these rocks are, and in fact

Ireland was more or less where Iceland is now, and it's sitting on what we call

a hot spot.

Layer after layer of lava was erupted onto this landscape 60 million years

Those volcanic eruptions here during the Paleocene epoch would look pretty much

like the modern -day volcanic activity on the islands of Hawaii.

You've got all this great pile of lava flows, probably four or five lava flows,

with a red layer of ash at the base.

of each one.

These rocks now, they're very old and cold. There's been no volcanic in

Ireland for many, many millions of years.

And the reason for that is because we have moved away from that hotspot. The

Atlantic Ocean has been getting wider and wider. It grows at about two and a

half centimetres a year.

And so, whereas we were once where the volcanoes were, now we're... sort of a

thousand miles away from them.

Well, you would think that these bare sort of rocky cliffs are pretty

inhospitable places for anything to live. And in fact, when you look at a

these rocky cliffs, what you're seeing is not the actual colour of the rock.

You're seeing the colour of the lichens that are growing on them.

And a lichen is a partnership between an alga and a fungus.

And on coast, you actually see a very distinct zoning.

Low down on the shore, you'll see most of the rocks look black.

And a bit higher up, a lot of the rocks look orange.

And a bit above that, the rocks look a sort of grey colour. And that's because

of the lichens that grow on them.

The dark, bathout rock found at the entrance to the Gobbins holds its own

secrets too.

When the magma was deep beneath the Earth's surface, actually within it, it

actually contains a lot of gas.

And when it comes towards the surface, a lot of that gas is released as bubbles.

And it's all to do with kind of hot water percolating down through the lava

after it's solidified.

So all of these little white dots, these were bubbles.

It had lots and lots of gas dissolved in it because it's full of all these

little white specks here, which are actually a white mineral called zeolite

fills bubbles that was in the lava originally.

So this was fizzy lava. So as it came out of the sepia, it probably would have

fountained all over the place. Quite spectacular.

And the shoreline just south of the Gobbins provides more clues to the

creatures. who dwelled on this island millions of years ago.

You come to a beach which is covered with...

gray and white pebbles. And this gives an idea of what rocks are actually

underneath the basalt. It's a layer of hard white limestone.

And this was deposited beneath a sea, an ancient sea 80 million years ago, far

out to sea.

And within this chalk, you sometimes find fossils like this. It's a thing

a belemnite.

And underneath that layer of hard white limestone, there is a layer of much

softer Jurassic clay, which is about 200 million years old. And that Jurassic

clay is actually full, of fossils and i've got some here and you've got these

little curly ones here this is a shell of a fossil called an ammonite and there

are other little sea shells in there as well so this is evidence that 200

million years ago this whole area was covered by sea in which it was all sorts

of creatures were living two fragments of dinosaur

bone have been found here at the gobbins in these Jurassic clades, and these are

the only dinosaurs known from anywhere in Ireland.

So the Govan's is rightly famous for its amazing cliff path, but it's also

famous because it's the place where the only dinosaurs known anywhere in Ireland

were found.

The cliff path is indeed something of a wonder in its own right.

At the end of the 19th century, a civil engineer was so enthralled by the

wonders of the Gobbins that he built a chain of walkways for paying tourists.

It was originally built by Barclay Dean Wise, opened in 1902.

But it's a difficult part of the world. You're subject to storms and rock falls.

So by the 1950s, it had fallen into disrepair and was abandoned.

But in the...

Last couple of decades it's been rejuvenated and rebuilt and now is a

opened tourist attraction once more with these amazingly engineered paths along

this rather precipitous cliff.

As we near the final stage of our journey, the footprint of mankind

and more visible.

The next landmark is the Castle of Carrickfergus, built by the Norman John

Courcy in 1177, after he conquered eastern Ulster.

It had a strategic military role for centuries afterwards.

Three -quarters of the castle perimeter is permanently surrounded by water.

Around 55 million years ago, magma was forced into the existing mudstone rock

here, making it harder and more resistant to erosion than the rest of

shoreline.

And this rock is perfect for building a castle to last the onslaught of wind,

waves, and water.

368 metres above the sea level, the rugged terrain of Cave Hill sits at the

eastern point of the Antrim Plateau.

Its giant profile is nicknamed Napoleon's Nose, and from this natural

point, the city of Belfast and its lock revealed itself.

A settlement here on the ford of the rivers Farset and Lagen dates back to

Iron Age.

Like Londonderry's Loch Foyle 100 miles away, Belfast Loch is perfectly

sheltered.

For centuries, this natural inlet has offered seafarers 12 miles of virtually

tide -free passage to the oceans of the world.

But its depth of 65 feet and 5 mile width made it the ideal home for a

shipbuilding industry.

It was here that the most famous ship in the world was constructed.

RMF Titanic.

Before it set off on its ill -fated voyage in 1912.

Today's ships still sail from Belfast out to the open seas and away from

the extraordinary Causeway Coast.

Without doubt, one of the world's most beautiful landscapes.