Fair Head Antrim
Fair Head on the northeast Antrim coast is the most dramatic headland in Northern Ireland, a great cliff of basalt columns approximately 180 metres high above the North Channel whose combination of the scale of the cliffs, the views across the narrow sea to the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland and the quality of the walking on the clifftop and through the remarkable glacial landscape of the plateau behind the cliff makes it one of the finest natural heritage destinations in Ulster. The basalt columns of Fair Head are among the largest in the British Isles, the individual columns reaching up to 120 metres in height in a display of geological structure that equals and in some respects surpasses the better-known Giant's Causeway.
The plateau behind the cliff edge contains a remarkable landscape of glacial lakes, peat bog and ancient woodland remnants that have developed in the shelter of the cliff behind in a habitat mosaic of considerable ecological interest. The three glacial lakes of Lough na Cranagh, Lough Doo and Lough Fadden occupy corrie-like depressions on the plateau and the grey lang, an area of glacially transported boulders, demonstrates the scale of the glacial ice that shaped this headland.
The views from Fair Head across the North Channel to the Mull of Kintyre, approximately 23 kilometres away, and on clear days to the coast of Islay further north, provide the most direct appreciation of the geographic relationship between northeast Ireland and southwest Scotland, a proximity that underpinned centuries of cultural exchange between the two coastlines.