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

Mussenden and the Roe Valley

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

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

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

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

Climb Sawel from the Glenelly Road, following the fences over the bog

Walk the ridge from Sawel to Dart, the second-highest summit in the Sperrins

On a clear day, pick out the Foyle estuary, Lough Neagh and the Mournes from the top

Drive the Glenelly valley under the mountain

Sawel, at 678 metres, is the highest of the Sperrin Mountains and the highest mountain in Northern Ireland outside the Mournes; its summit is on the county boundary, with Londonderry to the north and Tyrone to the south. Dart, at 619 metres the second highest in the range, is along the ridge to the west. The Sperrins are an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, mostly moorland and blanket bog under rounded summits, and the usual loop goes up from the Glenelly Road, following wire fences that make a navigation line in any weather. On a clear day you can see north to the Foyle estuary and east across Northern Ireland to Lough Neagh and the Mournes. Golden eagles from the reintroduced Donegal population have been seen across the range.

Sawel and Dart: The Top of the Sperrins

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

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.

Free Derry: The Gable Wall and the Bogside Murals

Walk the bawn walls and the fortified house inside them

Find out what a bawn was for and why the London companies built so many

Ask what of the Heaney material is on show at the bawn, and what has moved to HomePlace up the road

Walk from the bawn into the townland Heaney wrote about

A bawn is a fortified enclosure, and the Plantation of Ulster covered the county in them — walled yards with a house inside, built by London livery companies to hold the land they had been granted. Bellaghy's was burned in the 1641 rebellion and rebuilt in 1643. Construction began about 1614 under John Rowley, it became a museum in 1996, and because Seamus Heaney grew up a few fields away the bawn has shown material on him as well as on the Plantation — one building carrying both the settlement and the poetry that came out of the ground it settled.

Bellaghy Bawn: A Plantation Fort That Heaney Wrote In

Sit in the walled butterfly garden on a warm still day and count the species

Walk the shrub gardens and the lake in the old demesne

Walk the forest trails around the grounds

Find what is left of the manor house itself

Drum Manor is a quiet old estate outside Cookstown where the house is largely gone and the grounds remain — and inside one of the walled gardens they have planted specifically for butterflies, so on a warm still day in summer the enclosure fills with them. There are shrub gardens, a lake, and forest walks around it. It is a small place and it does one thing very well.