Scenic Place in County Londonderry

Glenariff Forest Park in County Antrim is the largest and most spectacular of the Antrim Glens, a deeply incised river valley descending from the Antrim Plateau to the sea at Waterfoot on the Antrim coast, its combination of wooded gorge, waterfalls, river scenery and coastal views making it the most rewarding of the nine glens for which this section of the Antrim coast is celebrated. The forest park covers approximately 1,000 hectares and provides a network of waymarked walking routes of varying difficulty from the gentle riverside waterfall trail to longer forest and glen rim walks with panoramic coastal views. The waterfall trail is the most popular walk in the park, following the Glenariff River through a gorge of considerable drama past a series of waterfalls, including the impressive Ess-na-Crub and Ess-na-Larach falls, in a landscape of mossy rock, ferns, oak, ash and willow that creates an atmosphere of green, dripping intimacy quite unlike the open moorland plateau above. The combination of the rushing water, the enclosed gorge and the quality of the woodland makes this one of the most atmospheric short walks in Northern Ireland. The poet Thackeray, who visited the glen in 1842, described it as Switzerland in miniature, an enthusiastic Victorian comparison that captures the quality of scale and drama relative to the surrounding landscape if not the geological character. The glen has been a tourist destination since the nineteenth century when the combination of the Antrim coast road and the steamer services from Glasgow made the area accessible to visitors from mainland Britain. The forest park facilities include a visitor centre, café and well-maintained paths and picnic areas that make it an excellent family destination in the Antrim Glens Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Mussenden Temple is one of the most dramatic and photographed buildings in Ireland, a small circular classical temple perched right at the very edge of a 120-foot cliff along the north coast of Northern Ireland near Castlerock in County Londonderry. Nothing quite prepares you for the first sight of it: an elegant domed rotunda of precise classical proportions balanced improbably at the cliff edge above the Atlantic, its soft honey stone contrasting with the dark ocean below and the vast expanse of Downhill Strand sweeping to the east. The temple was built in 1785 by Frederick Augustus Hervey, the Bishop of Derry and fourth Earl of Bristol, a figure of considerable personal eccentricity and cultural sophistication who had travelled extensively in Italy and developed a passionate appreciation for classical architecture. Hervey commissioned the temple as a summer library, intended to house his substantial book collection in a building where he and his guests could read with the Atlantic as a backdrop. The design, executed by the Cork architect Michael Shanahan, was modelled on the Temple of Vesta in Rome, and the circular colonnade and domed roof are inspired interpretations of the classical original in local Downhill stone. The temple was named in honour of Hervey's cousin, Frideswide Mussenden, a young woman of whom the bishop was reportedly extraordinarily fond. She died before the temple was completed, and what began as a library gift became a memorial. The Latin inscription carved around the base of the frieze, taken from Lucretius, expresses the pleasure of watching storms from a safe vantage point, an apt choice for a building on a crumbling Atlantic cliff. The Downhill Demesne that surrounds the temple contains the substantial ruins of Downhill House, Hervey's palatial main residence, which was gutted by fire in 1851 and further stripped after the Second World War when it was used to billet Royal Air Force personnel. The contrast between the intact perfection of the small temple and the romantic ruin of the great house creates a landscape of considerable atmospheric power. The National Trust manages the property and has carried out cliff stabilisation work to protect the temple, which coastal erosion has brought ever closer to the cliff edge. The surrounding demesne grounds are freely accessible throughout the year from dawn to dusk, with car park charges applying. The clifftop walk around the estate is superb, with views west across Downhill Beach toward Magilligan Point and Donegal, and east toward the headlands of the Causeway Coast. The Bishop's Gate Garden and Walled Garden add botanical interest to a visit of considerable historical and scenic richness.

The Dark Hedges near Stranocum in County Antrim is one of the most photographed natural features in Ireland, a beech avenue of approximately 150 years old whose intertwining canopy and atmospheric quality have made it one of the iconic images of the Northern Irish countryside and, since its appearance as the King's Road in the television series Game of Thrones, one of the most visited locations in Northern Ireland. The trees were planted in the eighteenth century by the Stuart family of Gracehill House as an impressive entrance avenue to their property and the century and a half of growth has produced the extraordinary interlocking canopy that creates the tunnel effect in both summer and winter. The Game of Thrones connection, though now the primary driver of the tourism that has made the Dark Hedges a National Tourism destination, is secondary to the genuine natural quality of the avenue itself. The beech trees, planted in pairs on either side of the road, have grown toward each other across the carriageway as mature beeches inevitably do and the resulting canopy creates a natural tunnel of considerable atmospheric power regardless of any television association. The trees are now protected and managed by the local authority and the volume of visitor traffic has required the introduction of managed access arrangements to protect both the trees and the narrow country lane that runs beneath them. The most atmospheric photographs of the Dark Hedges are made in early morning or evening light when mist is present, conditions that occur with some regularity in the north Antrim countryside.

Cushendall is the principal village of the Glens of Antrim, a settlement at the confluence of three of the nine Antrim glens whose combination of the colourful painted shopfronts, the remarkable Curfew Tower that serves as the principal visual landmark of the village and the access it provides to the surrounding glens and the Antrim coast makes it the most rewarding base for exploring this section of the northeast Irish coast. The village is the centre of the Red Bay area and the nearby Red Bay castle ruins provide the medieval dimension to a village whose character is primarily Georgian and Victorian. The Curfew Tower, an unusual circular red sandstone tower built in 1817 by Francis Turnly as a place of confinement for idlers and rioters, is the most distinctive building in the village and provides a visual focal point quite unlike any other structure on the Antrim coast. Its original function as a lock-up for disturbers of the peace was apparently taken seriously by its builder, who was sufficiently exercised by the idleness of the local population to build a dedicated facility for their correction. The surrounding Glens of Antrim, in particular Glenariff to the south with its series of waterfalls and the Forest Park, Glenaan and Glenballyeamon to the north, provide excellent walking and scenery in a landscape that is among the most beautiful and most traditionally Irish in the northeast. The Irish language has been spoken in the Glens for centuries and the Gaelic culture of this section of Antrim is among the most authentic surviving in Ulster.

Rathlin Island is the only inhabited offshore island in Northern Ireland, a L-shaped basalt island approximately eight kilometres long lying six miles off the Antrim coast near Ballycastle that supports a permanent population of around 150 people and is accessible by ferry from Ballycastle in approximately forty-five minutes. The island combines spectacular coastal scenery of basalt cliffs and sea stacks, one of the most important seabird colonies on the east coast of Ireland, a rich history of Viking raids, medieval ownership disputes and more recent agrarian history, and the distinction of being the location where Robert the Bruce took shelter in the famous cave before his return to Scotland to resume his struggle for Scottish independence. The RSPB West Lighthouse reserve at the western tip of the island is the principal wildlife attraction, its cliff faces supporting one of the most important seabird colonies in the British Isles. Puffins, razorbills, guillemots, kittiwakes and fulmars breed in enormous numbers on the basalt stacks and cliff ledges during the spring and early summer, and the RSPB viewpoint at the lighthouse provides some of the most accessible close-range seabird watching available anywhere on the island coasts of Britain and Ireland. The puffins in particular, which nest in burrows in the turf above the cliff edge, can be observed at very close range. The cave in which Robert the Bruce is said to have sheltered between his defeats and his decisive victory at Bannockburn in 1314, observing the spider that repeatedly attempted to spin its web as an inspiration for his own persistence, is accessible on the island. The cave story is one of the most celebrated in Scottish tradition and Rathlin's claim to the location has the credibility of historical accounts that support his presence in the area.