Saturday June 20, 2009

We had breakfast at the hostel and then we were off to Carrick-a-rede rope bridge.  We walked quite a ways to the bridge which was originally constructed each year by fishermen to catch salmon.  The bridge seemed pretty safe, but up on the hill it was windy and a little scary to be close to the edge.  It was a beautiful walk to and from the bridge, right up on the coast.  I can't even put into words how wonderful it was, especially since it stopped raining early on.  After sandwiches for lunch, we walked over 5 miles to the Giant's Causeway which resulted from an ancient volcanic eruption.  The walk began on a beach, then we had to traverse over some rocks, and then up onto the hills.  We passed by a huge mansion that was used as a sort of correctional facility back in the day.  Some of the boys spent the walk exploring caves and other cool things, and Hadden was worried about them.  We walked even more down to the Giant's Causeway then climbed on the rock formations, then a long walk back uphill with no shoes on (where were my shoes?).  Hadden bought us all ice cream cones because we had worked up a sweat.  For dinner it was either fish and chips or chicken sandwich and chips and since I had fish and chips the night before I went for the chicken.  Hadden said that we had walked probably a total of 9 miles that day, phew!  After dinner, a very famous Irish artist, Ross Wilson came to talk with us.  He has done many sculptures throughout Ireland and has done portraits of people like Prince Charles and John Keats and had his work in galleries all over the world.  All night Mindi was saying that Phil looked like the Alphabet Angel sculpture that Ross did in the town that we were in, and when we introduced ourselves Ross asked Phil if he knew him from somewhere and then Ross said, you look like one of my sculptures.  He told the best story of being invited to a dinner at Hillsborough Castle to have dinner with Prince Charles and then being invited to Prince Charles' castle in Scotland and everything that happened there.  It was a really great story of eating with Charles and Camilla, going to church with them, and taking a walk with Charles, and not having enough socks.  He is a really good story teller, and he wasn't bragging at all.  He focuses on doing sculptures for communities that have a lot of terrorist activity and para-military action.  He also trys to spread the gospel whenever he can like giving Prince Charles a booklet on C. S. Lewis' conversion story.  We were all in awe of Ross when he left, so we asked for his autograph!  I slept well that night.