You can literally walk in the footsteps of giants on a Northern Ireland golf vacation.

While we would advocate for playing as much golf as possible on a Northern Ireland golf vacation, one of our golden rules of traveling is to never leave a place without experiencing at least a few of the off-course sights, sounds, activities, and tastes that make it famous or unique.

One of the great things about a Northern Ireland golf vacation is that you don't have to go very far from some of its best golf courses to find its most famous sight, the Giant's Causeway.

Just seven miles east of Northern Ireland's great Royal Portrush Golf Club, on the scenic Antrim Coast Road, is the Giant's Causeway, a network of 40,000 basalt (i.e. volcanic) columns packed together, their tops forming "stepping stones" that lead away from the shore and disappear under the sea.

Similar columns can be found on the Scottish island of Staffa, giving rise to the romantic myth that the Causeway was a road built by an Irish giant whose sweetheart, a lady giant or giantess, lived on the Scottish isle.

What's almost more unbelievable than this fantastic story is how molten rock can crystallize and form these near perfect, hexagonally shaped columns, some of which are 40 feet tall.

In 1986, the Giant's Causeway was declared a World Heritage Site and some consider it to be one of the top-five greatest natural wonders in all of the United Kingdom. It's definitely worth a short detour on a Northern Ireland golf vacation.

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