Drive or walk up to the Binevenagh cliff top and look out over the Magilligan peninsula

Look across Lough Foyle into Donegal from the escarpment

Walk a stretch of Benone Strand below the cliffs

Find the basalt columns in the escarpment face, the same rock as the Causeway

Binevenagh is the north-western end of the Antrim basalt — a great escarpment of cliff standing over the Magilligan peninsula and dominating the skyline above Bellarena, Downhill, Castlerock and Benone. It is both an Area of Special Scientific Interest and the centre of a 138 square kilometre AONB. From the top you look across Lough Foyle into Donegal and out along one of the longest beaches in Ireland.

Binevenagh: The Basalt Escarpment Over Magilligan

Binevenagh and Magilligan

Four nights and eighty-five kilometres from the Glens of Antrim along the Causeway Coast to Binevenagh, with short legs, low-tide basalt and a rope bridge to a fishing rock.

The Causeway Coast: A Long Weekend From the Glens to Binevenagh

Walk out to Mussenden Temple on the cliff edge above Downhill Strand

See how close the cliff edge comes to the walls, and where the 1997 stabilisation work holds it back

Walk the ruins of Downhill House, the Earl Bishop's mansion behind the temple

Go down onto Downhill Strand and look back up at the temple from the beach

Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry from 1768 to 1803, built a small circular temple on the cliff edge above Downhill Strand in 1785 and kept his library in it. It was once possible to drive a carriage the whole way around the building. It is not now — the Atlantic ate the cliff in so close that the National Trust had to stabilise it in 1997 to stop the building being lost, which is the only reason it is still standing there.

Mussenden Temple: A Library on the Edge of a Cliff

Walk the gorge path where the Roe is forced through the narrows at the visitor centre

Find the disused hydroelectric station, the first in Northern Ireland, built in 1896

Find the flax drying fields and the watch towers built to stop linen being stolen

Go through the Green Lane Museum on the linen industry and rural life

The Roe runs south-west of Limavady through three miles of steep-sided gorge and riparian woodland, and the whole valley is a record of industry using water. The 18th-century linen industry worked this site — flax drying fields with watch towers to stop the linen being stolen, derelict buildings, and a waterwheel that drove the machinery. Beside it stands a disused hydroelectric generating station, the first to operate in Northern Ireland, from 1896.

Roe Valley: The First Hydroelectric Station in the North

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

Find the O'Cahan tomb inside the priory ruins

Look at the carved figures in the arcade beneath the effigy

Find the bullaun stone under the rag-hung thorn bushes outside

Look at how the 1100s priory sits on the foundations of older churches

The Augustinian priory at Dungiven was built in the 1100s on the foundations of earlier churches, and inside its ruins is the O'Cahan tomb, long said to be that of Cooey na Gall O'Cahan, who died in 1385 — though the effigy itself looks to be late 15th-century work, and may be a later man of the same family — one of the finest medieval tombs in Ireland, with the effigy above and a row of armed figures carved in the arcade beneath. Outside in the graveyard a thicket of thorn bushes is hung with rags: a bullaun stone sits under them, and people still come to it seeking cures for warts.

Dungiven Priory: The O'Cahan Tomb and the Rag Tree

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 complete circuit of the walls, the only intact city walls in Ireland

Find the gates the thirteen apprentice boys shut in December 1688

See the cannon mounted on the ramparts, including Roaring Meg

Look down from the walls into the Bogside and read the murals from above

On 7 December 1688 thirteen apprentice boys ran ahead of the city's own leaders and shut the gates in the face of a Jacobite regiment — an act of open rebellion against James II. The following April the king himself appeared before these walls with an Irish army, and the siege that followed became the first major event of the Williamite War. The walls held. They were built by the Irish Society between 1613 and 1619 under the London builder Peter Benson, and they are the only complete circuit of city walls left in Ireland — you can walk the whole way round on top of them.

The Walls of Derry: Thirteen Apprentices and 105 Days

Climb the Hill of The O'Neill and pick out how many of Ulster's nine counties you can see — seven of them are in view on a clear day

Find out how the Flight of the Earls in 1607 ended the Gaelic order in Ulster

Go through the Ranfurly House arts and visitor centre at the foot of the hill

Work out why a hill with this view was worth ruling a province from

The O'Neills ruled Ulster from this hill at Dungannon, and from it seven of the nine counties of Ulster are clearly visible from it — which is exactly why they chose it. Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, held out against the English crown from here, and when he and Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, sailed from Rathmullan for Catholic Europe in September 1607, the old Gaelic order went with them — their lands were escheated and settled by Protestants from Britain in the Plantation of Ulster. The site now has a viewing platform on the summit.

The Hill of The O'Neill: Where Ulster Was Ruled

Stand at Free Derry Corner, the gable wall left standing after the house was demolished

Walk the Bogside murals in sequence and follow what they depict

Look down on the Bogside from the city walls above and see how the ground lies

On 5 January 1969 community activists barricaded the Bogside and Creggan after the RUC came into the area, and somebody painted on a gable wall: You are now entering Free Derry. The barricades came down after six days, went back up, and the area stood outside British control until 1972. The gable end still stands on its own in the middle of the road, the house behind it long gone. The murals painted around it by the Bogside Artists tell the events of those years, including Bloody Sunday.