Tag: June

Iceland

2,400 miles distant

MichaelStephenWills6 Comments

Next stop Iceland, about 705 miles over the water, in this view north from Giant’s Causeway walk.

Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

  • Next stop Iceland in this view north from Giant’s Causeway walk. Can you see the human figures. They provide a sense of scale.

Can you see the footpath? The human figures? They provide a sense of scale. I love that patch to yellowed grass.

  • Next stop Iceland in this view north from Giant’s Causeway walk. Can you see the human figures. They provide a sense of scale.
Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Weathered Lava

Spheroidal weathering of Basalt

MichaelStephenWills8 Comments

In preparation for our Ireland tour I woke before work to research each location, filling a leather bound notebook with facts and observations. Faced with the Giant’s Causeway I was woefully unprepared to comprehend the sights.

Walking down the Causeway path, the cliffs rise on the right, at the foot are these strange deposits. The Causeway is part of an enormous lava plateau formed during eruptions 50-60 million years ago. This lava was at bottom, eventually exposed to weather. As eons passed, the basalt reacted chemically with rainwater, the outer rock flaking off like layers of an onion to reveal these strange rounded forms.

Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

Being here is like finding the abandoned workshop of a giant. The place lives up to the name.

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Volcanic Dike

A Bactrian Camel (?)

MichaelStephenWills

The entire northern Antrim coast is the remnant of an lava flow hundreds of feet deep, the depth corresponds to cliff height today. It made a great location for a defensive fort, or dun, featured in an earlier post. I say today because on a time scale of 50 million years the late Bronze age, 3000 years ago, was yesterday.

Here is another view from the Giant’s Causeway walk, wonders presented at every step. This lava dike, now surrounded by water, formed when flowing lava entered a crack though a layer of basalt from an earlier eruption. The lava cooled, over eons the surrounding material eroded, leaving a wall of rock. This formation has an irregular surface that resembles a two humped camel from some angles.

Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Labrador

2,400 miles distant

MichaelStephenWills1 Comment

Next stop Labrador, Canada, North America in this view from the Giant’s Causeway Walk.

Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

The attraction has miles of footpaths, every inch with stunning views such as this.

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Broken

Enormous and Personal Scale

MichaelStephenWills13 Comments

Volcanism formed much Ireland landscape and can be credited with a huge tourist attraction near Bushmills, Northern Ireland, UK (Click me for another post of volcanic Irish landscape). The opening of the mid-Atlantic rift and movement of continents dwarfs the origin story of a roadway built by giants to connect Ireland to Scotland.

Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

On a prosaic scale, the granite curbs stones proved my undoing. On the walk out of the Causeway, in the falling light of dusk composing a shot, eye to the viewfinder, I fell off the curb. The camera fell, breaking the mount on both the flash and camera. To this day, I need to hold the flash in wireless mode when using the Sony.

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Dunseverick Castle Ruin, roadside info

Pride of History on display

MichaelStephenWills2 Comments

On Causeway Road there is a turnoff an information placard for Dunseverick Castle near a cottage. This is the left side of the placard with the historical context. The right side is natural history of the area.

Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

  • This is the right side of the placard.

Click me for the first post of this series.

Reference: Wikipedia “Dunseverick Castle.”

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Dunseverick Castle Ruin, closer

Recollections of Saint Patrick

MichaelStephenWills8 Comments

Slight pangs of regret recalled in my first Dunseverick Castle post are recalled this morning on remembering the long Slige Midluachra (aka “High King’s Road”) of which Dunseverick Castle was the terminus, beginning from the Hill of Tara. Walk the High King’s Road, “why not?.”

Here we can see the two partial wall, remains of a gate house, destroyed in the 17th century. I can imagine making the climb up the foot path, examine the earthworks from before the Viking invasions, middle of the first millennium A.D. Recall a visit by Saint Patrick, trodding the path from his Easter fire on the Hill of Slane.

Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

Explore my photography on Shutterstock for use with your blogs

Reference: Wikipedia “Dunseverick Castle.”

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Torr Head Photos

My latest photos accepted into Getty IStock

MichaelStephenWills2 Comments

Click me to view the latest batch of photos accepted into Getty….these are from Torr Head..

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Cushendun Published

Photography accepted this week by Getty

MichaelStephenWills3 Comments

Click me to visit Getty, my recently accepted Cushendun photography.

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Beauty and Infection

Cutting Trees to Fight Disease in Glenariff Forest Park

MichaelStephenWills9 Comments

White Hawthorne tree blooms grace hedgerows of the rural hillside facing Glenariff Forest Park. The other white is grazing sheep. The North Channel of the Irish Sea is visible at the foot of the glen, with the shore of Scotland just visible.

Foreground are the stumps of mature trees cut by the forest service to control the oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum. We visited June 2014, the year before, October 2013, the Belfast Telegraph reported “Northern Ireland is close to the point where it will be impossible to eradicate a virulent disease from the forests where it has taken hold.” Glenariff Forest part was one of those forests and the tree stumps are victims of that struggle.

Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

Here is a link to this photograph on Getty.

Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills