The rivers have carved deep valleys through the Antrim Mountains to the sea. Celebrated in song and verse, the Glens of Antrim used to be the wildest and most remote part of Ulster. This region was not ‘planted’ with English and Scots settlers in the...
Leaving the Causeway, turn inland to Bushmills, noted for the “Old Bushmills” Whiskey Distillery. This had a license to distil whiskey dated 1608, although it was distilled for some centuries earlier. The town also has a salmon research station. From here the B17 leads directly...
Groined by deep glens and walled along the west by the bare hilltops and the tufted moors, this rim of arable that ends in foam… The lovely Nine Glens bite deeply into the basalts of the Antrim plateau and into the hard overlays of modern history....
The traditional prophecy, attributed to St. Columbia, that “a stranger mounted on a white horse and bearing a shield of painted birds shall conquer Ulster” appeared to be fulfilled when John de Courcy headed the Norman invasion of Ulster in 1177. Gradually the Anglo-Norman overlords...
Dunluce (Dun Lios, the Fort of Enclosures) an Anglo-Norman castle build by Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, about 1300, was taken by the Chief of the MacDonnell clan Somhairle Buidhe (Yellow Charles) in 1560 who reconstructed it. In the wars with the Tudor England,...
The quiet coastal road which climbs up from the bay and village of Cushendun has its little hair-raising hills and hairpin drops leading to the most surprising landscape in Antrim, or indeed, in Ireland. To come unexpectedly upon lovely Murlough Bay with its high green...
Fortresses In Ireland At almost every turn in the Irish countryside there are remnants of ancient forts, some now reduced to mounds overgrown with grass, others the crumbling fragments of once-massive strongholds. The story they tell is of a harsh and often dangerous existence endured over...
A short boat trip away from Ballycastle harbour is Rathlin Island, said in legend to have been dropped into the sea by the mother of the legendary hero Finn MacCool, on her way to Scotland. The habitation of this 6 mile long, L-shaped island is...
‘Switzerland in miniature’ is how the English writer William Thackeray described Glenariff in 1872. Of all the Antrim glens, this is the best known. It contains a state-owned forest park and the village of Waterfoot, also called Glenariff. The village is known for its traditional...
At the meeting of Glenshesk and Glentaistie lies the 15th century friary, burial place of the MacDonnells. It is reached on foot down a pathway from the main road. The friary was built by the local ruler, Rory MacQuillan, who was defeated by the MacDonnells...