Malin Head: Hell's Hole

So after our morning touring, I did fall asleep for a bit...  Then we took off in the car and headed straight to Hell er, Hell's Hole....  We drove to Banba's Crown and then got out to walk around.  Banba's Crown is the most northerly point of the mainland of Ireland.  On it sits an old tower built by the British/Lloyd's of London, in 1805 to monitor shipping traffic and to ward off invasion.  The waterway around Malin Head is particularly treacherous and over 400 shipwrecks have been recorded around the peninsula. The Tower at Banba's Crown was the first place in Europe to get news of Abraham Lincoln's assassination and of the start of the California Gold Rush.

If you walk to the tower, you can look down and see white stones spelling "EIRE" and this was done so planes would know they were flying over Ireland, a neutral country in WWII.  Why was Ireland neutral?  Perhaps because they were a relatively new nation?  Perhaps because they viewed any request or pressure coming from Great Britain as suspect?  I don't know.  There are some interesting books about it, including one by Bernard Kelly called Returning Home, which was published in 2012.  It is an interesting  read.

We did not climb the tower.  When we got out there in the afternoon, our gorgeous sunny day was essentially gone and it was WINDY, like, lose your car door windy.  So, we decided just to trek down the path to Hell where we belonged!

According to information about it, Hell's Hole is a subterranean cavern and gorge that is 250 meters long and 8 meters wide where the sea rushes in through the long, narrow neck into a wide basin where there is a sea cave.  Amy and I sat there for a long time watching the tide come in.  It was amazing and beautiful, and it warmed up a bit.  After all, we were in Hell's Hole....

You can see that the blue sky started coming back out for us as we walked the path along the cliffs.

In the Bay we saw a seal, but couldn't capture it on camera...If I zoom in on my picture, I can see a dark shadow in the water that would be the seal.

The next several pictures are the area known as Hell's Hole.
 

This was where we were watching the tide roll in.  The water was so aqua and lovely, and the waves were just crashing in on the rocks and eventually covering them.  I can see why it is a dangerous area for ships!