Best Hidden Gems in County Antrim and Down
Best Hidden Gems in County Antrim and County Down
Beyond the Causeway: the Glens of Antrim, Fair Head, Rathlin’s puffins, Strangford Lough, St Patrick’s grave and the Mourne Mountains – the places most coach tours miss.
Beyond the Giant's Causeway
Most visitors to Northern Ireland follow the same line: Belfast, Titanic, the Dark Hedges, Carrick-a-Rede, the Giant's Causeway, back to Belfast. That route is popular for good reasons, but it leaves out most of the two counties that hold the best of the country's landscape. County Antrim has the Glens, the cliffs of Fair Head and an island of puffins. County Down has the Mourne Mountains, the vast sea lough of Strangford, and the places where Ireland's patron saint is said to have lived, preached and been buried.
"Hidden" is relative – locals know all of these. But you will share them with far fewer people. Combine this post with our 7-day Northern Ireland itinerary.
The Glens of Antrim
Glenariff Forest Park
The best known of the nine Glens, but the Waterfall Walkway – a boardwalk trail through a mossy gorge past a series of falls – is never as crowded as the coast. Allow about two hours for the main loop; there is a parking charge.
Cushendun
A small village at the mouth of the Glendun river, owned by the National Trust. Its white cottages with slate roofs were designed by Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect of Portmeirion in Wales, in a deliberately Cornish style. At the south end of the beach, sea caves cut through the rock.
Glenarm and Carnlough
Glenarm is one of the oldest villages in Ulster, with a castle whose walled garden is open in season. Carnlough has a stone harbour built for shipping limestone, and a hotel once owned by Winston Churchill.
The wild north coast
Torr Head and Murlough Bay
The Torr Head road between Cushendun and Ballycastle is single-track, steep and nerve-racking – and it gives the best views on the whole coast, across to Scotland's Mull of Kintyre about 12 miles away. Murlough Bay below is one of the most beautiful and least visited corners of Ireland.
Fair Head
A colossal headland of columnar cliffs, one of the best rock-climbing venues in Britain and Ireland, with a cliff-top walk from the National Trust car park at Coolanlough. There are no railings – stay well back in wind.
Rathlin Island
Northern Ireland's only inhabited offshore island, an L-shaped island of about 150 people, reached by ferry from Ballycastle. The RSPB West Light Seabird Centre overlooks one of the largest seabird colonies in the UK – puffins from about April to July. Robert the Bruce is said to have hidden in a cave here in 1306 and learned patience from a spider. Rent a bike or walk; visitors' cars are generally not allowed.
Ballintoy and the Causeway cliff path
The tiny harbour at Ballintoy is now famous from television, but the cliff-top walk from Dunseverick Castle to the Giant's Causeway, about five miles, remains one of the finest coastal walks in Ireland – and the best way to arrive at the Causeway itself.
East Antrim
The Gobbins, Islandmagee
A guided walk on bridges and walkways bolted to the cliffs, first opened in 1902 and recently reopened after storm repairs. Booking essential; about £24 per adult.
Whitehead and Blackhead
A Victorian seaside village of painted houses with a steam railway museum and the Blackhead Path out to a lighthouse on the cliffs.
Carrickfergus
A Norman castle on the shore, and the church where William of Orange is said to have worshipped after landing here in 1690. The ancestors of US President Andrew Jackson came from this area.
The Ards Peninsula and Strangford Lough
Mount Stewart
One of the great gardens of the National Trust, created by Edith, Lady Londonderry, in the 1920s, with a Dodo Terrace of stone animals. The house was the family home of Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, the foreign secretary who in 1815 pressed the great powers at the Congress of Vienna to sign a declaration condemning the slave trade – one of the stranger connections between an Irish country house and Africa.
Grey Abbey and Scrabo Tower
Grey Abbey is a 12th-century Cistercian ruin on the lough shore, free to visit. Scrabo Tower, on a hill above Newtownards, gives a panorama over the whole of Strangford Lough.
Portaferry and the Strangford ferry
A car ferry crosses the narrow, fast-flowing mouth of the lough every half hour between Portaferry and Strangford village. Seals and wintering geese gather in huge numbers on the lough. From Strangford, it is a short drive to Castle Ward.
St Patrick country
Tradition places much of St Patrick's mission in County Down. At Saul, a small church stands where he is said to have founded his first church in a barn. In Downpatrick, a granite boulder in the churchyard of Down Cathedral marks his traditional grave, and the Saint Patrick Centre tells his story. Nearby, the ruins of Inch Abbey stand on the marshes of the River Quoile. Patrick himself was a Romano-Briton who, by his own account, was captured by raiders and enslaved in Ireland as a teenager before escaping and later returning as a missionary – the island's patron saint was a former slave.
The Mourne Mountains
The granite Mournes rise straight from the sea at Newcastle, and their summits are linked by the Mourne Wall, a dry-stone wall 22 miles long built between 1904 and 1922 to mark the catchment of the Silent Valley reservoir. Slieve Donard, at 850 metres the highest mountain in Northern Ireland, is a steep but straightforward climb from Donard Park in Newcastle – allow 4–5 hours there and back.
- Tollymore Forest Park – riverside trails, stepping stones and stone follies at the foot of the mountains.
- Silent Valley – the reservoir and its dam, with walks and a summer shuttle bus to Ben Crom.
- Murlough National Nature Reserve – 6,000-year-old sand dunes and a long beach facing the mountains.
- Dundrum Castle – a free Norman ruin with views over the bay.
The weather in the Mournes changes quickly; carry a map, waterproofs and food, and turn back if the cloud comes down.
Belfast secrets
Clifton House, the Georgian Poor House of the Belfast Charitable Society, tells the city's double history with slavery: some of its founders traded in enslaved people or slave-produced goods, while others – led by Thomas McCabe – stopped a proposed Belfast slave-ship company in 1786 and welcomed the formerly enslaved writer Olaudah Equiano in 1791. Cave Hill, above north Belfast, is the hill whose shape is said to have inspired Jonathan Swift's sleeping giant in Gulliver's Travels; it was on its summit in 1795 that Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen swore to fight for an independent Ireland. The Crown Liquor Saloon, a Victorian gin palace owned by the National Trust, is still a working pub.
Guided tours
Small-group tours from Belfast cover the Causeway Coast and the Glens; others head south to the Mournes and Strangford Lough.
Tours and experiences
Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome.
Read next
Belfast, the Giant's Causeway, the Dark Hedges and Derry.
Castle Ward, Tollymore, Ballintoy and more.
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All our guides to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
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