North Coast

The north coast of Ireland stretches along Ulster’s Atlantic-facing shore, taking in counties Antrim and Londonderry and home to some of the most dramatic coastal scenery anywhere in the British Isles, most famously the basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site formed by volcanic activity around 60 million years ago, when cooling lava flows cracked into the roughly hexagonal columns that have drawn visitors and inspired legend for centuries.

Just offshore lies Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland’s only permanently inhabited offshore island, famous both for its puffin colonies, viewable from the dramatic West Light Seabird Centre at the island’s western tip, and as the place where Robert the Bruce is said to have taken inspiration from a persistent spider during his exile there in the fourteenth century, a legend still commemorated across Scotland as the origin of the maxim “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Rathlin’s own history stretches back much further still, with evidence of Mesolithic settlement making it one of the earliest inhabited sites anywhere in Ireland, and its strategic position controlling the narrow North Channel between Ireland and Scotland made it a repeated flashpoint for conflict, most notoriously the 1575 Rathlin Island massacre, in which English forces under the Earl of Essex killed several hundred MacDonnell clan members, including many women and children who had sought refuge on the island.

Visiting

The north coast’s waters facing the narrow North Channel towards Scotland have historically been an important crossing point between Ireland and Scotland, with the Mull of Kintyre visible on a clear day, a proximity that has shaped centuries of shared Gaelic culture, trade, and periodic conflict between the two coastlines, and the region’s dramatic cliffs, sea stacks, and the rope bridge at Carrick-a-Rede, first erected by salmon fishermen nearly 350 years ago to access a small rocky island rich in fishing grounds, draw large numbers of visitors year-round.

Landscape

This stretch of coast has also gained enormous international attention as a filming location for the television series Game of Thrones, with locations including the Dark Hedges and various coastal sites doubling for scenes across the fictional Seven Kingdoms, further boosting tourism to the area and introducing this dramatic landscape to a global television audience largely unfamiliar with Northern Ireland’s coastline before the show’s broadcast.

More about North Coast

The north coast’s combination of world-famous volcanic geology at the Giant’s Causeway, historic island heritage on Rathlin stretching from Mesolithic settlement through Robert the Bruce’s legendary exile to a dark chapter of Elizabethan-era conflict, and dramatic Atlantic scenery further amplified by recent global television fame, makes it one of the most visited and celebrated coastal regions anywhere in Ireland, a landscape whose geological, historical, and modern cultural significance rarely fail to leave a lasting impression on visitors.

Nearby, the village of Bushmills is home to the Old Bushmills Distillery, which holds a licence to distil whiskey dating back to 1608, making it one of the oldest licensed whiskey distilleries anywhere in the world, and the perched ruins of Dunluce Castle, clinging dramatically to a rocky headland between the Causeway and Portrush, recall the medieval and early modern power of the MacDonnell lords who once controlled much of this coastline. Portrush, a popular seaside resort a short distance further along the coast, is home to Royal Portrush Golf Club, which in 2019 became the first course outside mainland Britain to host golf’s Open Championship in 68 years, bringing further international attention to this stretch of the Antrim coastline.

The coast road linking these attractions, built in the mid-19th century partly to open up the area to early tourism, is itself regarded as one of the finest coastal drives in Ireland, winding along cliffs and past small fishing harbours such as Ballintoy, whose picturesque harbour has also featured prominently in television and film productions shot along this coastline. This stretch of coast, often marketed as part of the wider Causeway Coastal Route, has in recent years been consistently ranked among the world’s great coastal drives by international travel publications, a recognition that has further cemented the north Antrim coast’s status as one of the island of Ireland’s most important tourism assets.