I went along the Elie chain walk in Fife. It's along the base of the cliffs and covered in water in part at high tide. To get over the cliffs, there are a series of about 8 chains to hang on to. You can see one just to the left of centre of the top picture. I found columnar basalt in one of the bays - like Fingal's Cave or the Giants' Causeway, that I haven't seen. Basalt is made from oceanic lava, which has a different chemical composition to crust lava. A thick lava flow like this cools when it hits the air. As it cools, the lava contracts. It pulls almost equally in all directions and all parts are doing this. The result is that the interior of the lava flow is cracked up forming the columns. They are usually hexagonal.
