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Seven or so miles north of Ballycarry, the A2 enters LARNE , the last town of any size for a considerable distance on the coastal route. Larne is an important freight centre and is also one of the main ports of entry for visitors to Northern Ireland, served by ferries run by P&O (from Cairnryan in Scotland and Fleetwood in England) and Stena Line (from Stranraer in Scotland). Although the town's seaside position is impressive and its main street bustles with shoppers most of the week, it is, in reality, a grim and ugly place, paint-splattered with Loyalist slogans, symbols and insignia. The town's history is inextricably linked to its convenience as a landing stage. Norse pirates used Larne Lough as a base in the tenth and eleventh centuries; Edward Bruce, brother of Robert, landed here in 1315 with a force of six thousand men to urge the Irish to overthrow the English; and in 1914, the Ulster Volunteers, opposed to the Irish Home Rule Bill, landed German arms here - one April night, some 140 tons, consisting of an astonishing 35,000 rifles and five million rounds, were unloaded and rapidly distributed to supporters throughout Ulster by a waiting motorcade of several hundred vehicles. The racket was such that local residents believed an invading army had arrived. History apart, though, Larne is not a place to hang around in. The only real landmark is the round tower , at the entrance to the port, and even that's an 1888 reproduction - a memorial to James Chaine MP, the driving force behind the development of Larne's sea routes to Scotland and the Americas. The other sight is the ruined sixteenth-century Olderfleet Castle , which cowers amid the industrial wasteland of the harbour. The coast around Larne, stretching from Garron Point in the north to Black Head in the south, is of great geological interest, with examples of just about every rock formation and period, from the earth's original crust to raised beaches and glacial deposits. At Curran Point , just south of the harbour, flint bands, frequently found in the chalk of this coast, provided useful material for Stone Age people, and many arrowheads and other artefacts have been found. Three-quarters of a mile out on the Antrim Coast Road, north of Larne, beyond Waterloo Cottages, stands a large monument to the engineer of this road, William Bald, and his stalwart workers, who blasted their way through, over and round this route in the 1830s. Here, at low tide, bands of fossil-rich Lias clay are exposed - even dinosaur remains have been discovered - and beneath the black basalt boulders, the mollusc shell, Gryphea , known locally as the Devil's Toenail, is common. Check at the Larne tourist office for geological tours and their useful guidebook to the rock formations of this part of the coast.
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