Part of Giant’s Causeway cordoned off following rockfall

By Rebecca Black, PA

A rockfall has taken place at one of Ireland’s best known natural wonders.

It happened in the Loom area at the back of the Giant’s Causeway on Friday.

Visitors looked on as rocks crumbled away from a section of the famous basalt columns in north Antrim.

The immediate area was then cordoned off.

It comes several months after the National Trust, which cares for the Giant’s Causeway, urged visitors to stop leaving coins in rock cracks.

Work has been under way to remove coins from countries across the world, including from the Far East and United States, because they can put pressure on the surrounding rock.

A National Trust spokesperson said they are not linking Friday’s rockfall to coins in the rock cracks.

“On Friday at around lunchtime, there was a small rockfall in the Loom area (back of the Giant’s Causeway) in Port Noffer,” they said.

“As a dynamic site, rockfalls do occasionally occur at the World Heritage Site. The area in which the rockfall took place is now temporarily cordoned off.

“Although coin removal work was being carried out today, this activity and the incident are not related.”

While geologists say that the causeway was created by an outpouring of Basalt lava 60 million years ago around the time the North Atlantic was opening up, there are also legends that it was formed by an Irish giant Finn McCool.

The National Trust protects and cares for more than 40,000 columns at the Giant’s Causeway, which is Northern Ireland’s first Unesco World Heritage Site and also benefits from a number of other important designations.