There must have been cartloads of quarried causeway stones came up that old kelp track before they started getting down to the "stumps" left in the main "Giant's Causeway" section down at the sea. Even in the 1980's some columns were cracked all the way up and seemed stacked up like a pack of Opal Fruits out of their wrapper. These handy "slices" of GC form beautiful borders around a fair few Antrim Rockeries and gardens. Really exclusive geological kinda crazy paving.
There are also weird clumps of columns in outcrops about twenty feet high at the many points where the coastal path goes through the columns and basalt reefs from one headland into the next along the myriad of little hemmed-in bays and inlets. Kind of Jules Verne-ish. I cannot recommend visiting this place highly enough, it is more than just the GC, the whole coastal path dips in and out of this kind of basalt weirdness for miles.
I have some wonderful memories of my time over there. A few are based on licensed premises, but more often than not they are of the utterly bewildering landscape of North Antrim which me and a few skint pals used to regularly trek out across.
This thread got me thinking about my photo box and I'd dug out a few photos from my visits to the GC in the mid 80's (and a visit to Fingal's Cave in 89) to put up here as "Antrim" and "Mull" images. I was (as we all are I suppose) a bit shocked at what the years had done to my youthful face in between then and now. I'm also sure that here on TMA we are all feel in some way, some kind of connection or draw to our past, our prehistoric ancestors, their stones, their rock art etc. The Giant's Causeway knocks all thoughts of our human past clean off the map. Sit down there in "The Lady's Wishing Chair" and read "On A Raised Beach" by CM Grieve ("Hugh MacDiarmid").

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176171

Look up at the towering cliffs above you. Clamber up and down seven-sided, eight-sided, fourteen-sided columns all butting up against each other in perfect scale, fitted and angled like some maths experiment that simply went too far. Feel the cold chill of Geological Time tap you on the shoulder...

But don't be all day about it... there is a pint of porter and a hot whisky waitin' for ye in the snug at The Harbour Bar at Portrush. Ye can mull these things over in yer own good time there.