Scenic Place in Causeway Coast and Glens District

Portballintrae is a small and attractive coastal village on the north Antrim coast of Northern Ireland, a sheltered bay of considerable charm near Bushmills that provides a quieter and more residential alternative to the busier tourist destinations of the Giant's Causeway coast immediately to the east. The village sits on a rounded bay of golden sand backed by low cliffs, its stone cottages and the small pier giving it the character of an unspoiled seaside community that has developed organically rather than for the tourist trade. The village's position on the north Antrim coast places it within easy reach of the major attractions of this section of coastline. The Giant's Causeway, one of the natural wonders of the world, is less than two miles to the east along the cliff path, and the walk between Portballintrae and the Causeway along the coastal path is one of the finest short coastal walks in Northern Ireland, passing above the columnar basalt cliffs and providing views along the entire north Antrim coast toward Rathlin Island and the Scottish mainland beyond. The Bushmills Distillery, the oldest licensed whisky distillery in the world, is a short distance inland from Portballintrae and provides one of the most visited and most rewarding industrial heritage experiences in Ireland. The combination of the distillery visit, the Giant's Causeway and the coastal walking makes this small corner of north Antrim one of the most concentrated areas of visitor interest in Northern Ireland. The beach at Portballintrae provides safe bathing and the sheltered bay is popular with families who find the combination of the small village character and the beach facilities more relaxed than the major tourist centres nearby.

Bushmills is a small village in County Antrim on the north coast of Northern Ireland, famous throughout the world as the home of the Old Bushmills Distillery, the oldest licensed distillery in the world, whose whiskey has been produced on this site since at least 1608 and whose visitor experience provides one of the most popular and most rewarding distillery tours in Ireland. The village itself is a pleasant Antrim settlement of stone cottages and the River Bush that flows through the village has provided the water for whiskey production for over four centuries. The Old Bushmills Distillery, the centrepiece of the village's identity, produces the triple-distilled Irish whiskey that has made it one of the most recognised whiskey brands internationally, its distinctive smooth character a result of the triple distillation process and the quality of the local water filtered through basalt rock. The distillery tour, one of the most popular in Ireland, takes visitors through the production process from malting through distilling to maturation in the warehouse where the whiskey develops in oak casks over periods from three to twenty-one years. The village's position on the Causeway Coast provides access to the remarkable natural and heritage attractions of this section of the Antrim coast, including the Giant's Causeway three miles to the east, the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge and the dramatic coastal scenery of the Antrim cliffs. The Bushmills to Causeway tramway provides a heritage transport link to the Causeway visitor centre.

Murlough Bay is one of the most remote and most beautiful bays on the Antrim coast, a sheltered crescent of beach and grassland enclosed between the Fair Head basalt headland and the lower ground of the Torr coast in a setting of complete isolation accessible only by a steep and winding road descending from the clifftop above. The combination of the dramatic headland of Fair Head rising 180 metres from the sea to the north, the views across the North Channel to the Mull of Kintyre barely twenty kilometres away and the quiet of this remarkably undisturbed bay makes Murlough one of the most rewarding and least visited destinations on the Causeway Coast. The bay has strong associations with the Irish cultural revival through the graves of Roger Casement and several members of the MacQuillan family of Bun-a-Margy in the ruined chapel above the beach. Roger Casement, the humanitarian activist and Irish nationalist who was hanged for treason in 1916 following his attempt to land German arms for the Easter Rising, was repatriated and buried in the ruined Carey Church above the bay in 1965, fulfilling his wish to be buried in this corner of Antrim that he loved. The grave has become a place of quiet pilgrimage. The woodland and scrub behind the beach provide habitat for a range of birds and the rocky shore below supports the marine life of the North Channel in the clear cold water typical of this exposed coastline. The walking from the bay north along the cliff toward Fair Head provides increasingly dramatic views of the great basalt columns of the headland and the sea below, one of the finest short cliff walks on the entire Antrim coast.

Torr Head is a dramatic headland on the Antrim coast at the point where the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland narrows to approximately twenty kilometres, the closest point between Ireland and Scotland from which the Scottish mainland, the Mull of Kintyre and even individual buildings of Campbeltown are visible on clear days. The combination of the dramatic headland scenery, the narrow sea crossing and the remote character of this section of the Antrim coast gives Torr Head a distinctive quality. The Torr Head road from Cushendun to Ballycastle is one of the most spectacularly scenic coastal roads in Ireland, a narrow route climbing and descending the series of headlands above the North Channel with continuous views of the sea and the Scottish coast beyond. The road's combination of narrow width, dramatic gradients and extraordinary views makes it a memorable driving experience on a section of coast that rewards those who venture beyond the main tourist routes. The landscape around Torr Head is part of the Antrim Glens Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the combination of the coastal headlands, the glens descending to the sea and the agricultural character of the North Antrim uplands creates a coastal landscape of considerable diversity. The view from Torr Head on a clear day of the Scottish coast is one of the most immediate reminders available of the proximity and common cultural heritage of Ulster and the Scottish Highlands.