Cycle the coast road from Ballycastle to Portballintrae, about 24 km

Drop down the steep road to Ballintoy harbour

Stop at the Giant's Causeway and walk down to the stones

Ride back to Ballycastle by an inland road instead of retracing the coast

About 24 kilometres of the Causeway Coastal Route between Ballycastle and Portballintrae, with Ballintoy about 8 km in, and on a bike you stop where you want: down the narrow, steep road off Knocksaughey hill to Ballintoy harbour, at the Giant's Causeway, and in Bushmills. The road has real climbs on it — this is not a flat coastal spin — and the ride back is better done inland, through the farmland behind the coast, than by retracing the same road.

Ballycastle to Portballintrae by Bike

Take the ferry from Ballycastle across to Church Bay

Get out to the West Light and watch the puffins from the RSPB viewing platforms

Find out why they call the West Light upside-down — its light sits at the base of the tower rather than the top

Find out what happened on Rathlin in July 1575

Look for Irish hares along the island's walking trails

Rathlin is the only inhabited offshore island of Northern Ireland, home to about 150 people, and the ferry crosses from Ballycastle to Church Bay, six nautical miles away. At the far west end, four and a half miles from the harbour, the West Light was built into the cliff face from 1912, finished towards the end of 1916 and first lit in 1919 — Ireland's only upside-down lighthouse — and the RSPB seabird centre there looks out onto stacks where puffins, guillemots, kittiwakes, razorbills and fulmars breed. Robert the Bruce took refuge on Rathlin in 1306, and Bruce's Cave is where he is said to have watched the spider that persuaded him to keep fighting. In July 1575, on the orders of the Earl of Essex, Francis Drake and John Norreys took Rathlin and killed hundreds of the MacDonnells' people, among them women and children.

Rathlin: Puffins, Bruce's Cave and the Upside-Down Lighthouse

Walk the Giant's Causeway at low tide, when the full basalt pavement is exposed

Cross the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge to the fishing island, about 30 metres above the rocks

Tour Old Bushmills Distillery, the working distillery whose labels carry the 1608 licence date

Park at the Hedges car park and walk the Bregagh Road at dawn — it has been closed to traffic since 2017 to protect the roots

Stop at Dunluce Castle on its basalt outcrop, reached by a bridge, between the Causeway and Portrush

Two days on the Antrim coast. The Giant's Causeway is 40,000 interlocking basalt columns left by a lava flow cooling and cracking, and it is best at low tide when the full pavement is exposed. Carrick-a-Rede is a rope bridge slung about 30 metres above the rocks to a fishing island, crossed a few at a time. Bushmills prints 1608 on its labels, the date of a royal licence to distil in the district, and the distillery still works. And the Dark Hedges — a beech avenue planted around 1775 — is worth walking at dawn; the Bregagh Road has been closed to traffic since October 2017 to keep vehicles off the trees' roots.

Causeway Coastal Route Weekend

Take the distillery tour through the mash house and the still house

See the copper pot stills and find out what triple distillation does to the spirit

Go into the warehouses and smell the angels' share coming off the casks

Taste the range side by side and find the one you would actually buy

The label says 1608, and what that date actually refers to is a royal licence granted by James I to Sir Thomas Phillips, a local landowner, to distil whiskey in the area. The company that built the present distillery was formed in 1784. Either way it has a claim to being the oldest licensed distillery in the world, it still works, and the tour takes you through mashing, triple distillation in copper pot stills, and the warehouses, finishing with a tasting.

Old Bushmills: A Licence Granted in 1608

Walk the Dark Hedges along the Bregagh Road

Find out why the Bregagh Road was closed to cars in October 2017

Go down to Ballintoy harbour, Lordsport in the second season

Find Larrybane, Renly's camp, beside the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge

The Dark Hedges, a beech avenue planted around 1775 by James Stuart of Gracehill House on the Bregagh Road between Armoy and Stranocum, played the King's Road in Game of Thrones. The road has been closed to traffic since October 2017 to protect the roots, and storms keep taking trees: two in Storm Gertrude in January 2016, two more in Storm Éowyn in January 2025. Twelve kilometres north, Ballintoy harbour was Lordsport on the Isle of Pyke in the second season, filmed in August 2011, and just east of it Larrybane, the old quarry beside the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, was Renly Baratheon's camp, where Brienne of Tarth first beat Loras Tyrell.

The King's Road and the Iron Islands: Game of Thrones on the Causeway Coast

Walk the East Strand towards the White Rocks and Dunluce

Work out which of the two beaches is sheltered today and use that one

Spend an hour in the arcades on the harbour front

Eat chips looking out at the Skerries offshore

Portrush sits on a peninsula with a beach on either side of it, which is unusual and very useful — whatever direction the wind is coming from, one of them is sheltered. The East Strand runs for miles towards Dunluce and the Causeway with dunes behind it, the harbour and the arcades are on the neck of the peninsula, and the whole place is a Victorian seaside resort that never stopped being one.

Portrush: The East Strand and the Arcades

Walk through the Cornish-style village Clough Williams-Ellis designed

Find the caves near the village used in Game of Thrones

Look across the North Channel to the Mull of Kintyre

Find out how Shane O'Neill died here in 1567

Walk up to the Carnanmore passage cairn on its hilltop

Cushendun, at the mouth of the River Dun and Glendun, one of the nine Glens of Antrim, was designed by Clough Williams-Ellis for Ronald McNeill, later Lord Cushendun, in the style of a Cornish village; the National Trust has cared for most of it since 1954. Scotland's Mull of Kintyre is only about fifteen miles across the North Channel and easy to see on a clear day. It was here that Shane O'Neill, chief of the Tyrone O'Neills, was killed by the MacDonnells in 1567. The caves near the village were used as a backdrop in Game of Thrones, and four miles north the Carnanmore passage cairn sits on its hilltop.

Cushendun: The Cornish Village in the Glens

Take the ferry from Cobh to Spike Island, the fortress island in Cork Harbour, once a 7th-century monastery and later a convict depot known as Ireland's Alcatraz

Tour the Fort Mitchel prison on Spike Island, the star fort whose cells held the convicts

Visit the Titanic Experience Cobh in the old White Star Line ticket office, from which 123 passengers boarded Titanic at Queenstown in April 1912

Go into St Colman's Cathedral in Cobh and hear its carillon, Ireland's only one, with 49 bells

Cycle Great Island, the island Cobh is on, on the road over the causeway to Fota Island and Fota House and Arboretum

Cork Harbour is one of the largest natural harbours in the world and the history is stacked up around it. Spike Island began as a 7th-century monastery and became a convict depot so notorious it got called Ireland's Alcatraz; you tour the cells of the star fort begun in 1790 and rebuilt far larger from 1804, renamed Fort Mitchel in 1938. Back in Cobh, the Titanic Experience occupies the actual White Star Line ticket office where 123 passengers boarded the ship at Queenstown in April 1912, and St Colman's above the town has Ireland's only carillon, 49 bells, the largest in these islands. The causeway takes you on to Fota.

Cobh, Spike Island and Great Island by Bike

Cycle the Carlingford–Omeath Greenway, approximately 8km along the shore of Carlingford Lough

Stop at a Greenway viewpoint and photograph the Mourne Mountains across the lough in County Down

In Carlingford, find Taaffe's Castle — an early 16th-century fortified merchant's townhouse on the old quay

Lunch in Omeath village, looking back down the Louth shore to Carlingford under Slieve Foy, with Warrenpoint across the water in County Down

Eight kilometres of greenway along the shore of Carlingford Lough, with the Mourne Mountains standing straight up out of the water on the far side in County Down — one of the best mountain views in Ireland from a flat bike path. Carlingford itself is a medieval town: Taaffe's Castle is a fortified merchant's townhouse of the early 16th century, built right on the old quay with a trading floor below and living rooms above, back when the sea came up to its door — there is no evidence the Taaffes it is named after ever built or owned it. Omeath at the far end looks back at Carlingford under Slieve Foy.