The Coastal Highway

We have driven the coastal highway in California. We have driven the Ring Road in Iceland. And thank goodness we were not driving the Coastal Highway in Belfast. Luckily, the drivers were quite polite and yielded when necessary . . . but we would have been nervous wrecks if we had been driving. The beauty of the highway certainly matches that of the other two places, though the green hillsides here surpassed both of the others. In all fairness, however, we were in Iceland in April, before the greening had taken place. I suspect it may have been similar during the summer to what we experienced today. The narrowness of the highway also surpassed the other two. Both the Ring Road and Highway 1 have adequately wide lanes and shoulders. This one had neither, and it had a wall built on the ocean side of the road. At one spot, we went under an arch that we would have hated to have had to share with anyone.

At one stop, we did see three islands - one a rookery, one a sheep island, and one a place where fishermen could lower their boats to the ocean, thereby avoiding taxes. The one used by the fishermen had a suspension bridge that is still used . . . by tourists . . . but not by these tourists!

We also passed three caves on the coastal highway. One was a cave where a woman distilled poteen, a very potent Irish liquor. She was caught and told if she continued to sell it, she would go to jail. She got around the ruling by giving the drink away but charging for the water she used.

The second cave was used as a blacksmith shop, and the third (hidden by the greenery) was used as a hedge school, which was a school to teach Catholocism when the religion was prohibited.