A vertiginous cliff path over a frothing sea has been named the cleanest hiking route in the country.
The Gobbins is a unique, breathtaking route that winds for three miles along the perilous cliffs of County Antrim in Northern Ireland. It has taken the top spot in a ranking of the cleanest walking trails in the UK carried out by Independent Cottages, with zero mentions of uncleanliness across over 1,300 reviews.
The Gobbins is a dreamlike landscape, created through immense geological forces and since carved by the elements. Today it is teeming with life and has been inspiring brave visitors for over a century.
The Gobbins’ story begins some 200 million years ago when the Earth’s continents were fused together in the supercontinent, Pangaea. The land that would become northeast Ireland lay beneath a warm and shallow sea. The algae and single-celled organisms that thrived in this water, which were encased in calcium carbonate shells, lived and died, slowly but surely building up layers of calcium on the seafloor, which solidified into a limestone layer.
This is what formed the coastlines and caves that are scattered across Ireland today. This stone forms the foundations of the Gobbins’ stunning rock formations. On top of this lies basalt that spewed from the eruptions of now long-extinct volcanoes, which has been cracked and sculpted by the shifting bedrock of tectonic plates as Pangaea parted, and later, great ice sheets during ice ages.
The result is one of the most dramatic bits of coastline anywhere in the British Isles, which happens to provide numerous habitats for various birds and sea life. For example, the Gobbins is home to Northern Ireland’s only mainland colony of puffins, which burrow into the cliff-side soils churned up by the glaciers. « Guillemots, razorbills, cormorants, and kittiwakes make their homes high in the rocks and scan the waters from perches on the sea stacks. The depths teem with fish, feeding in the plankton-rich waters of the North Channel. Lion’s Mane jellyfish, one of the largest such species, migrate through here, providing prey for seals, porpoises and other marine mammals, » the official Gobbins Cliff Path website writes.
« Low tide exposes the rockpools under the path, a home for molluscs, sponges and weird nodules of red seaweed. Spleenwort ferns, kidney vetch, and sea campion cling to cracks in the rocks or hold down patches of volcanic soil. »
The natural beauty of the place has made the place a must-visit trail for walkers, and was first visited en masse by naturalists and day-trippers in the Victorian age. Berkeley Deane Wise helped make the Gobbins what it is today. The civil engineer, who had risen to the rank of Chief Engineer of the Belfast and County Down Railway and had developed an innovative signalling system that reduced collisions on his lines, had a passion for safety and intriguing design.
Among his works are the mock Tudor building and clock tower in Portrush, and walkways and a tearoom in Glenariff Forest that provide an excellent view of its woods and waterfalls. The Gobbins Cliff Path is widely considered his most important contribution and best embodies his genius as an engineer working to help ordinary people enjoy extraordinary experiences.
Work on it began in 1901 and took several years, such was the difficulty of transporting steel girder bridges built in Belfast on barges and rafts. These were then winched into place on lines dropped from the clifftop. The path proved to be a huge success and attracted great numbers of visitors from across the British Isles. “There is, in short, nothing like The Gobbins anywhere else in the world,” wrote a correspondent in the Proceedings of the British Association in 1902.
A journalist for The Sketch added: “Surely there is something in the influence of the Irish climate which acts upon the rocks. The tints are softer and deeper. The very air is laden with poetry.”
Unfortunately, at the moment, the Gobbins route is closed due to rockfall. If you’re planning a visit, make sure to check the official website for updates on its status.
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