Irish Geology!!!!

I don't want to give too much away about what I like, but it's just one of those reoccuring things with me. I love Ireland. I love that island country with it's deep Celtic history, myths, and just it's natural beauty in general. And now I want to learn about some of it's most famous geological land marks. What better topic to pick than the famous Giant's Causeway? I've seen recreations and artist depictions like in the movie How To Train Your Dragon, but what's the real land mark like? Why do they even call it the Giant's Causeway? So I took a beeline on Google and went to it's very own website at www.giantscausewayireland.com/. (all info mentioned is on the site!) Like all geologic land marks, it had to have been first drawn and documeted, which happended in 1693, and then first drawn in 1740. Here's a map from the site:    So, all the way on the northern coast line is this massive assemblage of basalt hexagonial structures, jutting out of the coast and leading down towards the sea. The local geologist state that it was formed over 50-60 million years ago, and there are over 40,000 of these columns! They were said to be "formed during the Tertiary Period of the earth's evolution," due to "repeat outpourings of volcanic basalt." No wonder that call it the Eighth Wonder of the World!!! And now, because I love old Celtic legends, here is a brief tale about Giant's Causeway (from the website, and could count as a first-hand geologic record...): 
          Finn McCool, (yes, that's his name)or Fion Mac Cumhaill, a reknown hunter/warrior figure in Irish mythology, decided to go to Scotland, but decided to rest before his journey. When he awoke, he saw a Scottish giant called Benadonner coming up on the horizon. He realized that Benadonner was a whole lot bigger than himself, and went to his wife Oonagh for advice. She disguised him as a child curled up in a cradle, making the giant afraid of how big and powerful the father would be, so he ended up returning from whence he came, destroying the Causeway in the process. It was actually said that Finn made the Causeway as stepping stones to Scotland. Sadly, it's not true, unless Finn lived 60 million years ago!
Moving towards the detailed formation of the Causeway, the website states that over "65 million years ago, the last supercontinent, Laurasia, began to fragment," which, in turn formed "volcanic activity along the mid oceanic edges," one of them " running along the present Irish Sea." " White Limestone was being deposited" during "the earlier Cretaceous period 144-65 million years ago." Near the end of the Cretaceous period, there were "periods of uptift and erosion," leading to lava flows and even creation a "lava plateau." "the first basalts to erupt at the Causeway were exposed to the weather, thus producing the thin/red brown  inter-basaltic beds of weathered basalt before being buried by the next eruption." So, after a few more periods of uplift and eruption, exposing and burying basalts, the way the columns formed was by the way the lava flows cooled. When lava drained into the valleys, making that lava plateau, they cooled very slowly, and "deveolped regular patterns which went through the depth of flow." They "formed evenly spaced cooling cracks," creating those amazing columns. Both the real, and mythical story about how this geologic wonder was created are both pretty fascinating, wouldn't you say?And now, here's a pretty picture from sharewonders.com: