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

Glenarm and the Glens

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 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

Walk through the Barbican Gate to Glenarm Castle

See the castle's walled garden and the woodland walk

Find out why Glenarm claims to be the oldest town in Ulster

Walk up into the glen behind the village, the first of the nine Glens of Antrim

Glenarm lies in the southernmost of the nine Glens of Antrim — Gleann Arma, the valley of the army — on the North Channel coast between Larne and Carnlough, and it claims to be the oldest town in Ulster, with a charter from the 12th century. There has been a castle here since the 13th century. Sir Randal MacDonnell was still adding to a new castle on the present site when he died in 1636; Munro's Scots burnt it in 1642, and the house you see was rebuilt by Alexander, 5th Earl of Antrim, in 1756 and much enlarged in the 19th century. It is still the family home. The old castle stood by Sir Randal MacDonnell, 1st Earl of Antrim, and it is still the family home: the McDonnells have been at Glenarm for nearly 600 years. Its walled garden opens to the public from May to September, and the Barbican Gate has been restored by the Irish Landmark Trust.

Glenarm: The First of the Glens and the Earl's Castle

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

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 down towards the Mull of Kintyre lighthouse at the peninsula's south-western tip, first lit in 1788, on the headland Wings sang about in 1977

Look across the North Channel to Northern Ireland, about 12 miles away, on a clear day

See the footprints carved in the rock at Keil near Southend, said to be those of St Columba

See Dunaverty Rock at Southend, site of a massacre in 1647

The Mull of Kintyre lighthouse, first lit in 1788 and rebuilt in 1821–30, stands at the south-western tip of the peninsula, with Northern Ireland about 12 miles across the North Channel on a clear day — the headland made famous by Wings' 1977 song 'Mull of Kintyre'. At Keil near Southend a pair of footprints carved in the rock are said to be St Columba's, and Dunaverty Rock was the site of a massacre in 1647.

Mull of Kintyre: Lighthouse and St Columba's Footprints

Take the boat out to Garnish Island and walk Harold Peto's gardens

Climb to the Martello tower on the island

Walk the old oak and birch woods of Glengarriff Forest

Find out why the house Peto designed for the island was never built

Ilnacullin, Garnish Island, in Glengarriff harbour, was bought from the War Office in 1910 by John Annan Bryce, a Belfast man, and Harold Peto designed its gardens; the mansion Peto drew for it was never built. Bryce's son Roland left the island to the Irish nation in 1953. George Bernard Shaw stayed, and there is a restored Martello tower from the Napoleonic Wars — straight-sided, like the others in Cork, rather than splayed at the base. Behind the village, Glengarriff Forest keeps some of the oldest and most extensive oak and birch woods left in Ireland.