Rugged beauty of a different world right on our doorstep

Once in a blue moon, you’ll happen upon something that just takes your breath away – metaphorically as well as literally, because there’s a wind off the sea at Ballintoy beach that fills your lungs and your soul in equal measure.

Ballintoy is a short stretch down the North Antrim coast from the Giant’s Causeway – and while that UNESCO World Heritage Site is the one that draws the visitors from all corners of the planet, there’s clearly a new kid on the block.

Of course, Ballintoy has always been there, but its upsurge in popularity for most visitors is that – as the Iron Islands of Westeros – it’s one of the recurring locations for Game of Thrones.

As someone who has never seen a single second of the global phenomenon, that aspect was irrelevant – unless you were entertained by the sight of fifty-year-old men coming off a tour bus, dressed head to toe as Vikings.

But Ballintoy doesn’t need any television series to sell its beauty; you descend a narrow, winding road that makes the Corkscrew Hill look like a motorway, past an old grey church – and then you turn a corner where the wild Atlantic awaits.

On a windy day like this one was (it was pre-pandemic too), the waves wash over the shore – and the visitors if they stand at the edge; huge crashing waves, walls of angry white submerging the rugged stones and bringing you face to face with the glory of nature.

With foreign travel largely off the agenda just now, it seemed like the perfect time to explore the unknown (to us) a little closer to home.

Which took us to the far North-East of the country for a weekend based in the whiskey village of Bushmills, a stone’s throw from the Giant’s Causeway itself.

There are three very different ways to get there – the straightforward route is up the motorway to Dublin and then another motorway to Belfast, but that’s boring.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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