Qualla: Fair Head https://qualla.com/fair-head en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/d/fair-head-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Fair Head https://qualla.com/fair-head Fair Head: Introduction https://qualla.com/fair-head/ Photo credit Anne Burgess, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Irish name is Benmore, the Great Cliff, and the great cliff is exactly what it is. Three miles of vertical dolerite, rising in cyclopean organ-pipe columns up to 300 feet above the boulder slope at its foot. From the climbers' lake at the top of the headland, the rim drops away in a hard black line. From sea level on the right day, the whole face stands silhouetted against the sky like a wall the giants of Irish myth might actually have built. Climbers who have climbed everywhere will tell you, with no irony, that there is nothing else quite like it. Belgian climbing magazine Climbing once ranked one Fair Head route in its top-five hardest E6 climbs in the world. British boulderer Dan Turner has called the bouldering here 'Britain's answer to Magic Wood in Switzerland'.

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Image: Anne Burgess | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/d/fair-head-wp/gcgd-fair-head-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Fair Head: A Sill From the Birth of the Atlantic https://qualla.com/fair-head/ Photo credit Minh28397, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fair Head's columns are not basalt like the Giant's Causeway a few miles west. They are dolerite, a coarser-grained relative of basalt, and they form what geologists call a sill: a tabular sheet of molten rock that was injected horizontally between layers of older sedimentary roc...

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Image: Minh28397 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/d/fair-head-wp/gcgd-fair-head-a-sill-from-the-birth-of-the-atlantic.mp3 0:06 2 full Fair Head: Trad-Climbing Religion https://qualla.com/fair-head/ Photo credit Anne Burgess, CC BY-SA 2.0. To climbers, Fair Head is one of the great trad-climbing destinations of the world. 'Trad' means traditional: no pre-set bolts, no fixed protection, only what the climber places into cracks as they ascend, and removes after themselves. Fair Head's routes average over fifty metres...

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Image: Anne Burgess | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/d/fair-head-wp/gcgd-fair-head-trad-climbing-religion.mp3 0:06 3 full Fair Head: The Climbing Meet https://qualla.com/fair-head/ Photo credit Britishfinance, CC BY-SA 4.0. Every year, on the first weekend of June, Mountaineering Ireland organises the Fair Head Climbing Meet. Climbers from across the British Isles and well beyond camp at the headland, climb together, and share the queue for the better-known routes. The American climber Alex Honnold,...

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Image: Britishfinance | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/d/fair-head-wp/gcgd-fair-head-the-climbing-meet.mp3 0:06 4 full Fair Head: Goats and a Crannog https://qualla.com/fair-head/ Photo credit Anne Burgess, CC BY-SA 2.0. If you visit Fair Head and never see a climber, the headland still rewards the trip. The McBride family farm has worked this land for over three centuries and gives access to walkers. The plateau on top is open moorland scattered with small lakes. In one of those lakes, the large...

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Image: Anne Burgess | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/d/fair-head-wp/gcgd-fair-head-goats-and-a-crannog.mp3 0:06 5 full Fair Head: On Screen Again https://qualla.com/fair-head/ Photo credit Mervyn Greer, CC BY-SA 2.0. Like much of the Antrim coast, Fair Head has had its turn in Game of Thrones. Two episodes of Season 7, The Queen's Justice and Eastwatch, used the headland as a location, the dolerite face standing in for various fictional cliffs of Westeros. The film crews come, the cameras rol...

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Image: Mervyn Greer | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/d/fair-head-wp/gcgd-fair-head-on-screen-again.mp3 0:06 6 full