As we reach the end of the walk, marked by bollards across the path, we leap forward millions of years to a mere 60m years ago, a time of widespread volcanic activity.

Watch Dr Mike Simms talk about these rocks

Successive lava flows covered much of what is now Northern Ireland and several dramatic landscapes, such as the Giants Causeway, the Mountains of Mourne and the Ring of Gullion, were created by volcanic activity, and other factors.

Here at Larne we can see how molten lava was being forced up through the earth's crust cutting through the much older rocks from 200m years ago and creating a low, vertical 'wall' of igneous rock (that is, rock formed by heat rather than by sediments) that we see running across the shore today.

These rocks probably came from a fissure eruption rather than from lava flow from active volcanoes.

If you can look closely at these rocks you can see that at the edges of the volcanic rock the clay of the older rocks has been baked by the tremendous heat.

You can also see that the volcanic rocks are a slightly different colour, and fine-grained, at the edges of the volcanic area. This is because they cooled down quicker as heat transferred to the surrounding clay.