BRIAN PEDLEY is enthralled by Northern Ireland's awe-inspiring World Heritage site, Antrim, and the folklore that surrounds it

WITH THE clouds hanging heavy, this was perhaps not the best of days to explore what is arguably the UK's greatest natural wonder.

However, as always, day trippers were arriving in their hundreds, only too pleased to march down the coastal path to the Giant's Causeway, on Northern Ireland's north coast.

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At the sea's edge, beneath the looming 40,000 columns of black basalt that make up the famous Causeway, I saw one rock form engulfed by a herd of clambering, cagoule-clad children.

The conventional wisdom is that this was once part of a mass of solidifying lava, sculpted by the weather into the shape of a gargantuan boot. National Trust guide Jim had his own take on the matter. "The boot's a size 93, " he said, "which means that its owner, giant Finn McCool, must have been at least 54ft tall."

Fire, ice, sea and rain have shaped this land during the past 60million years into something weird and beautiful, with a mythology that has grown ever more colourful and preposterous.

Designated by Unesco as Northern Ireland's only World Heritage Site in 1986, the Giant's Causeway has been luring visitors since the early 18th century.

Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain and Charles De Gaulle all passed this way and loved what they saw.

The site, acquired by the National Trust in 1961, attracts more than 600,000 visitors a year.

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Now the Trust has launched an appeal to raise £2.25million towards an £18.5million project to enhance and protect the site.

By the end of 2011 a new concealed visitor centre with a grassed roof will be in place beneath the headland. Trails will be extended, while wild orchids and native birds such as choughs and sedge warblers will flourish in habitats that have been richly improved.

Beneath us, the Grand Causeway thrust itself defiantly into the Atlantic, the black "pavement" of strangely interlocking hexagonal columns tumbling by levels into white waves.

More columns rose to my left and right, looming out of the mist like perfectly formed sticks of black honeycomb, to make a natural gateway. Ahead lay rocky pillars, known as "the chimney tops", silhouetted against an angry Antrim sky.

"The local people say Finn McCool built it to reach across the sea to Scotland, in order to challenge a rival giant called Benandonner, " said Jim, "but scientists will say it is the result of volcanic lava cooling slowly and evenly into basalt to form the regular shapes. We have to give both sides of the story, you know."

The Giant's Causeway lies at the northern edge of a sheet of solidified lava known as the Antrim Plateau, which extends south as far as the hills above Belfast, where my trip began. Standing at the summit of Divis Mountain, 1,562ft above sea level, I looked across windswept heathland to the beautiful expanse of the city, with its dockland, churches, stately buildings and distant loughs.

Like the Giant's Causeway, Divis Mountain is owned by the National Trust, which acquired the former Ministry of Defence site in 2005.

Standing over the city like a fond, protective uncle, Divis Mountain holds a special place in local hearts. "Quite a few people shed tears of joy when they were able to walk up here for the first time, " says Dermot, its warden.
In the years following the Troubles, Belfast has re-emerged as a stylish European capital.

In my 24 hours, I sank Guinness in the tiled and stained-glass splendour of the Crown Bar in Great Victoria Street, dined "most Irishly" on roasted loin of lamb and curly kale in the bohemian surrounds of the nearby Ginger Bistro and toured the Victorian Grand Opera House, restored in all its gilded glory from virtual dereliction in the Seventies.
The Giant's Causeway lies 75 miles to the north of Belfast. You reach it via the A2 North Antrim Coast Road where, in primeval Ireland, glaciers gouged the plateau to form the "Nine Glens".

Darkened by forests and bubbling with waterfalls, they abound with strange tales of lost souls condemned to live as "Little People", too bad for Heaven but not quite bad enough to be in Hell.

By mid-afternoon, the sky had cleared to a rainbow that arched majestically over the Giant's magical domain. "That's his harp, " said Jim the guide, pointing to thinly curved columns that nature had sculpted out of the wet rock to resemble taut strings. Then there were the rounded cylindrical columns soaring like pipework up the 400ft cliff face. "That's the organ the giant made for his son to play on, " added Jim. Finn was a big man all right but around these parts, the stories are even taller.

GETTING THERE:
easyJet (0871 244 2366/www.easyjet.com) offers return flights from Luton to Belfast City Airport from £42.

Fitzwilliam Hotel (028 9044 2080/www.fitzwilliamhotelbelfast.com) offers doubles from £115 per night (two sharing), B&B.

The Giant's Causeway: 028 2073 1582/www.giantscausewaycentre.com

Northern Ireland Tourist Board: www.discovernorthernireland.com