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

Editor's note

Watertop Farm sits on the Cushendall road outside Ballycastle, one night, under three kilometres from the day's ground and a seven-minute drive in. Nine glens run off the Antrim Plateau to the sea, each a separate valley with its own name, together an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; Glenariff, the one called the queen of them, is a deep wooded gorge with a waterfall trail through it. Take a mountain road over the tops instead of the coast road, and the road out to Torr Head, Northern Ireland's closest point to Scotland, where Lloyd's built a signal station in 1822. Ballypatrick Forest adds seven and a half kilometres on foot. Spring to autumn.

Editor's note

Skerries Holiday Park stands on the Dunluce road outside Portrush, two nights, two kilometres from the day's ground and forty kilometres — under forty minutes — from the Glens. The Giant's Causeway is 40,000 basalt columns left by a cooling lava flow, best at low tide when the full pavement is exposed; Carrick-a-Rede is a rope bridge slung 30 metres above the sea to a fishing rock. Old Bushmills still works and carries the 1608 licence date, and the Dark Hedges, a beech avenue of about 1775, repays a dawn start. Westward, the Earl Bishop built his circular library above Downhill Strand in 1785; the Atlantic has since eaten the cliff in towards Mussenden Temple, which is reason enough to go now.

Editor's note

Waterfall Caves lies on the Duncrun road outside Limavady, one night, a couple of kilometres from the day's ground and thirty-five kilometres, under forty minutes, from Portrush. Binevenagh is the north-western end of the Antrim basalt, a great escarpment of cliff over the Magilligan peninsula, dominating the skyline above Bellarena, Downhill, Castlerock and Benone; it is an Area of Special Scientific Interest and the centre of a 138-square-kilometre AONB. Drive or walk up to the cliff top and look across Lough Foyle into Donegal and out along one of the longest beaches in Ireland. The columns in the escarpment face are the same rock as the Causeway. The hill walk runs under three kilometres. Spring to autumn.