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

Ballycastle and Rathlin

Belfast

Six nights in a loop from Belfast along the Antrim coast: Glenarm and Cushendun in the Glens, puffins on Rathlin, the Giant's Causeway and Bushmills, then Mussenden Temple on its cliff.

The Causeway Coast and Glens from Belfast

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 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 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

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

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

Drive or walk into Glenariff and follow the waterfall trail through the gorge

Name as many of the nine glens as you can as you work along the coast

Take one of the mountain roads over the tops between two glens instead of the coast road

Look across to the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland from the high ground on a clear day

Take the road out to Torr Head, Northern Ireland's closest point to Scotland, where Lloyd's put up a signal station in 1822

Nine glens run off the Antrim Plateau down to the coast, each one a separate valley with its own name and its own character, and together they make an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Glenariff is the one people call the queen of them, a deep wooded gorge with a waterfall walk through it. The coast road links the mouths of the glens, and the mountain roads over the tops between them are empty and far better.

The Glens of Antrim: Nine Valleys to the Sea

Stay at least one night on Cape Clear Island, Ireland's southernmost Gaeltacht, reached by ferry from Baltimore all year, or from Schull in summer

Take the Fastnet Rock Lighthouse cruise from Cape Clear, passing Ireland's most southerly point

Pick up a few words of Irish from islanders — Irish is still the everyday working language here

Find the promontory fort at Dún an Óir, the Napoleonic signal tower and the island's early Christian sites

Cape Clear is the southernmost inhabited island in Ireland and a Gaeltacht island where Irish is still the everyday language, with summer colleges bringing students to learn it. That is the reason to stay a night rather than take the day boat: the island only sounds like itself once the ferry has gone. There are stone forts and holy wells on it from long before the language question arose, and boats run out from the island to Fastnet Rock, the last piece of Ireland the emigrant ships passed.

Cape Clear: A Night on the Southernmost Gaeltacht Island

Go to one of the public recitals, lectures or céilís during the Willie Clancy week — the classes are for registered students

Go to a trad session in one of Miltown Malbay's pubs

Walk Spanish Point beach and find out which Armada ships were wrecked off it

Buy a tin whistle and learn one tune well enough to play it through

The Willie Clancy Summer School, held in Miltown Malbay every year since 1973 in memory of the uilleann piper Willie Clancy, is the largest traditional music summer school in the world: in the week beginning on the first Saturday of July nearly a thousand students come from all over the world for classes in Irish music and dance. Out on the coast, Spanish Point takes its name from ships of the Spanish Armada wrecked off it in 1588; its beach, over a kilometre long, is a Blue Flag strand and one of the better-known surf breaks in Clare.