Climb to McArt's Fort on the summit and find the ditch that defended it

Stand on Napoleon's Nose and look down over the whole city and Belfast Lough

Find the caves cut into the basalt face that give the hill its name

Walk up through the grounds of Belfast Castle on the lower slopes

Cave Hill rises 368 metres straight behind Belfast, basalt cliffs and caves along its face, and the cliff at the end of it is called Napoleon's Nose because from the city it looks like a profile lying on its back. On the highest point are the remains of McArt's Fort, an ancient promontory fort defended by the cliff on one side and a ditch on the other. The whole of Belfast, the lough and the Down coast open up beneath you.

Cave Hill: Napoleon's Nose Over Belfast

Walk the tunnel under the Crumlin Road between the gaol and the courthouse

Go into the cells on C Wing and shut yourself in one

See the condemned man's cell and the execution chamber

Look across at the derelict courthouse from the gaol side

Charles Lanyon designed the Crumlin Road Gaol and it was built between 1843 and 1845 at a cost of £60,000. It held prisoners until 1996 and is the only Victorian-era prison left standing in Northern Ireland. The courthouse sits directly opposite, derelict since it closed, and a tunnel runs under the main road between the two so that prisoners could be moved from cell to dock without ever going outside. You walk through it on the tour.

Crumlin Road Gaol: The Tunnel Under the Road

Go through the nine galleries of Titanic Belfast, from Boomtown Belfast to the wreck

Stand at the head of the Titanic and Olympic slipways and see how the building's prows line up with them

Go aboard SS Nomadic in Hamilton Dock, the last White Star Line ship in existence

Find the Thompson Graving Dock, where Titanic was finished before she left Belfast

Find the old Harland & Wolff drawing offices, and look across to Samson and Goliath

Titanic Belfast opened in 2012, a hundred years after the ship's maiden voyage, on Queen's Island, the land Harland & Wolff built Olympic, Titanic and Britannic on. The building stands 38 metres high, the height of Titanic's hull, and its prows point straight down the Titanic and Olympic slipways towards the Lagan; inside, nine galleries run from Boomtown Belfast, the city as it was in 1909–11, through the building, the launch and the sinking. Around it is the rest of the story: the Thompson Graving Dock, where Titanic was finished before she left Belfast; SS Nomadic, launched on 25 April 1911 to carry passengers out to Olympic and Titanic at Cherbourg, and now the last White Star Line ship in existence; Harland & Wolff's headquarters and drawing offices, a hotel since 2017; and Samson and Goliath, the shipyard's Krupp cranes, put up in 1974 and 1969.

Titanic Belfast: The Slipways Where She Was Built

Browse St George's Market, the last surviving Victorian covered market in Belfast, built 1890–1896

Walk the Cupar Way peace wall, one of the longest in Belfast and up to 8 metres high, first built in 1969 after violence on Bombay Street

Add your own message to the mural-covered wall, as thousands of visitors have done

Attend a traditional music session in the Cathedral Quarter, at pubs like the Duke of York or the John Hewitt

Belfast has a Titanic story it tells very well and several others it tells more quietly. St George's is the last Victorian covered market left in the city, built between 1890 and 1896 and still trading. Cupar Way carries one of the longest and best known of the peace walls, up to 8 metres high, first put up in 1969 after the violence on Bombay Street and still standing decades after the ceasefires, covered in messages left by visitors. And the Cathedral Quarter keeps the traditional music going in pubs like the Duke of York and the John Hewitt.

Belfast: Peace Walls, St George's Market and the Cathedral Quarter

Visit C.S. Lewis Square with the Narnia sculptures

Find 'Little Lea', Lewis's childhood home in Strandtown, where he grew up before his mother's death in 1908

Explore the Holywood Arches area where Lewis played

Visit St. Mark's Church, Dundela, where his grandfather was rector

Photograph the lamp post sculpture in C.S. Lewis Square, one of seven bronze Narnia sculptures unveiled in 2016

C.S. Lewis grew up at Little Lea in Strandtown, in a house with long corridors and too many books, until his mother died in 1908 and his childhood ended — the wardrobe and the grief both went into Narnia. His grandfather was rector at St Mark's, Dundela, and the Holywood Arches were his boyhood ground. C.S. Lewis Square in east Belfast holds a group of bronze Narnia sculptures, including the lamp post, which stands in east Belfast looking exactly as wrong and as right as it does in the book.

C.S. Lewis's Belfast: Little Lea and the Lamp Post

Kayak on Lough Neagh, the largest lake in Ireland and Britain at 383 km²

Cycle a stretch of the Loughshore Trail, the signed cycling route that circles the entire lake

Walk Antrim Castle Gardens and find the T-shaped 17th-century canals, unique in Ulster

Find the Norman motte in the castle grounds, four centuries older than the canals

Lough Neagh is the largest lake in Ireland and in Britain, 383 square kilometres of it, and big enough that from the middle you lose sight of the shore. A signed cycling route, the Loughshore Trail, goes the whole way round it. On the Antrim shore, Antrim Castle Gardens keep a 17th-century formal garden, unique in Ulster, with a long canal and a second at right angles to it; the castle that stood beside them was built in 1613 by Sir Hugh Clotworthy and enlarged in 1662 by his son John, and a Norman motte stands in the same grounds, four hundred years older than the canals.

Lough Neagh: The Loughshore Trail

Book the guided tour and walk the cliff path bolted to the basalt

Cross the tubular bridge, the signature structure of Wise's 1902 design

Go through the tunnel cut into the cliff and past the sea caves

Look for seabirds nesting on the rock faces above and below the path

Berkeley Deane Wise, a railway engineer, bolted a walkway onto the basalt cliffs of Islandmagee and opened it to the public in 1902 at sixpence a head. Newspapers called it a perfect marvel of engineering and said its beauty baffled all description. The railway ran out of money in the 1930s, the path closed before the war, reopened briefly, and shut again in 1954. It came back in August 2015 as a guided tour across bridges, past caves and through a tunnel cut in the rock, with the sea directly below your feet.

The Gobbins: A Path Bolted to the Cliff Face

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.