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Fair Head
Fair Head or Benmore (Irish: An Bhinn Mhór; The Great Cliff) is a five-kilometre-long (three-mile), 200-metre-high (650-foot), mountain cliff, close to the sea, at the north-eastern corner of County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The cliff's sheer and vertical 100-metre-high (350-foot) dolerite rock face is shaped into distinctive vertical columns like organ pipes, which formed 60 million years ago when a sill of igneous rock was injected between horizontal Carboniferous sediments.
Fair Head is considered one of the best traditional climbing and bouldering locations in the British Isles, and is one of the biggest expanses of climbable rock in Northwest Europe. It has one of the largest concentration of extreme-graded routes in the British Isles, and has climbs at E9-grade (e.g. Rathlin Effect), as well as highball problems at E9-grade (e.g. Long runs the Fox), and bouldering at 8B+ (V14) grade (e.g. Blondie SDS).
The headland of Fair Head rises 200 metres (660 ft) above the sea, and extends for over 5 kilometres (3.1 mi). The dolerite rock face is over 100 metres (330 ft) high in places. Wild goats can be seen roaming among the rocks beneath the clifftops, where a walkway called The Grey Man's Path winds around the rugged coastline. From the road above the cliff, a human-made Iron Age island or crannóg can be seen in the middle of a lake, Lough na Cranagh. The lakes are stocked with trout and can be fished during the summer months. All of the land at Fair Head is private farmland, and not owned by the National Trust (who only have a lease on the land to the east of the headland). Access is by the goodwill of local farm owners. Fair Head is the closest headland to Rathlin Island.
Fair Head's rock formations appear on the 2nd century Ptolemy's map of Ireland from Ptolemy's Geography, described as a point called Ῥοβόγδιον (Rhobogdiun) (cf the Robogdii tribe), which academics believe is Fair Head. The name may derive from the Proto-Celtic root *bogd, "bend".
Fair Head (and the neighboring Murlough Bay) are classed as an area of special scientific interest (ASSI), and are on the register of Antrim ASSI.
Fair Head is a sill of Palaeogene age that is the thickest and most extensive of the various sills from the plateau lavas of northeast Ireland. A sill is a tabular body of what was once molten rock that was injected into horizontal rocks (usually well-bedded sedimentary strata). Fair Head's sill is 85 metres (279 ft) thick at its maximum, and consists of columnar-jointed dolerite rock (a medium-grained igneous rock compositionally equivalent to finer-grained basalt) showing crystals of olivine, that intruded into Carboniferous sediments in the north of the outcrop circa 60 million years ago. At the north end of Murlough Bay, a substantial sill (the Binnagapple sill) appears below the main Fair Head sill, separated by 85 metres (279 ft) of Carboniferous shales.
Despite the thickness, the heat from the Fair Head sill did not alter the underlying Triassic sandstone, however, shales have been converted to hornfels extending up to 5 metres (16 ft) from the contact. The distinctive columnar jointing of the dolerite rock is the result of stresses caused by the cooling and solidifying of the melt, and there are minor crush zones associated with later compression. Although the cliff face is stable, weathering has periodically toppled some columns producing blocks of massive dimensions on the scree below. Geologists record that even major storms barely disturb these blocks (e.g. unlike the limestone blocks at Ailladie in Clare), and thus the scree may be little changed since the late-glacial period.
The 2014 Fair Head guidebook, its 6th edition, lists over 430 routes mostly from grade VS 4b up to E6 6b, and the current climbing databases list over 445 routes at grades up to E9 6c. Fair Head is not regarded as an ideal crag for novice climbers, and the long nature of the routes (averaging over 50 metres, with many up to 100 metres), the requirement for long and intimidating abseils for access in many areas, and the high concentration of E-grade climbs, means that it is ideally a crag for intermediate and even more for expert-level climbers. There have been fatalities at the crag. An annual Fair Head Climbing Meet is held over the first weekend of June for all climbers.
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Fair Head
Fair Head or Benmore (Irish: An Bhinn Mhór; The Great Cliff) is a five-kilometre-long (three-mile), 200-metre-high (650-foot), mountain cliff, close to the sea, at the north-eastern corner of County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The cliff's sheer and vertical 100-metre-high (350-foot) dolerite rock face is shaped into distinctive vertical columns like organ pipes, which formed 60 million years ago when a sill of igneous rock was injected between horizontal Carboniferous sediments.
Fair Head is considered one of the best traditional climbing and bouldering locations in the British Isles, and is one of the biggest expanses of climbable rock in Northwest Europe. It has one of the largest concentration of extreme-graded routes in the British Isles, and has climbs at E9-grade (e.g. Rathlin Effect), as well as highball problems at E9-grade (e.g. Long runs the Fox), and bouldering at 8B+ (V14) grade (e.g. Blondie SDS).
The headland of Fair Head rises 200 metres (660 ft) above the sea, and extends for over 5 kilometres (3.1 mi). The dolerite rock face is over 100 metres (330 ft) high in places. Wild goats can be seen roaming among the rocks beneath the clifftops, where a walkway called The Grey Man's Path winds around the rugged coastline. From the road above the cliff, a human-made Iron Age island or crannóg can be seen in the middle of a lake, Lough na Cranagh. The lakes are stocked with trout and can be fished during the summer months. All of the land at Fair Head is private farmland, and not owned by the National Trust (who only have a lease on the land to the east of the headland). Access is by the goodwill of local farm owners. Fair Head is the closest headland to Rathlin Island.
Fair Head's rock formations appear on the 2nd century Ptolemy's map of Ireland from Ptolemy's Geography, described as a point called Ῥοβόγδιον (Rhobogdiun) (cf the Robogdii tribe), which academics believe is Fair Head. The name may derive from the Proto-Celtic root *bogd, "bend".
Fair Head (and the neighboring Murlough Bay) are classed as an area of special scientific interest (ASSI), and are on the register of Antrim ASSI.
Fair Head is a sill of Palaeogene age that is the thickest and most extensive of the various sills from the plateau lavas of northeast Ireland. A sill is a tabular body of what was once molten rock that was injected into horizontal rocks (usually well-bedded sedimentary strata). Fair Head's sill is 85 metres (279 ft) thick at its maximum, and consists of columnar-jointed dolerite rock (a medium-grained igneous rock compositionally equivalent to finer-grained basalt) showing crystals of olivine, that intruded into Carboniferous sediments in the north of the outcrop circa 60 million years ago. At the north end of Murlough Bay, a substantial sill (the Binnagapple sill) appears below the main Fair Head sill, separated by 85 metres (279 ft) of Carboniferous shales.
Despite the thickness, the heat from the Fair Head sill did not alter the underlying Triassic sandstone, however, shales have been converted to hornfels extending up to 5 metres (16 ft) from the contact. The distinctive columnar jointing of the dolerite rock is the result of stresses caused by the cooling and solidifying of the melt, and there are minor crush zones associated with later compression. Although the cliff face is stable, weathering has periodically toppled some columns producing blocks of massive dimensions on the scree below. Geologists record that even major storms barely disturb these blocks (e.g. unlike the limestone blocks at Ailladie in Clare), and thus the scree may be little changed since the late-glacial period.
The 2014 Fair Head guidebook, its 6th edition, lists over 430 routes mostly from grade VS 4b up to E6 6b, and the current climbing databases list over 445 routes at grades up to E9 6c. Fair Head is not regarded as an ideal crag for novice climbers, and the long nature of the routes (averaging over 50 metres, with many up to 100 metres), the requirement for long and intimidating abseils for access in many areas, and the high concentration of E-grade climbs, means that it is ideally a crag for intermediate and even more for expert-level climbers. There have been fatalities at the crag. An annual Fair Head Climbing Meet is held over the first weekend of June for all climbers.