United Kingdom · Antrim Coast
Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
Forty thousand hexagonal columns stepping into the Atlantic, at the centre of Northern Ireland's only World Heritage Site.
Around forty thousand basalt columns step out of the north Antrim cliffs and vanish under the Atlantic, packed so tightly and cut so cleanly that eighteenth-century scholars argued for decades over whether anything natural could have made them. The columns are the headline and Northern Ireland's only World Heritage Site, but the coast around them is the real prize: roughly thirty miles of chalk-and-basalt cliffs, ruined castles on sea stacks, hidden harbours and long empty strands between Portstewart and Ballycastle, joined end to end by one waymarked path. Most people base themselves in the whiskey village a couple of miles inland or the seaside resort along the coast, and reach the whole of it within an hour of Belfast.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
English
Currency
GBP
Timezone
UTC+1
Why you'll love Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
The stones near-perfect hexagons in their tens of thousands, stepping down off the headland and disappearing under the sea, close enough to climb out onto and strange enough that early visitors flatly refused to believe they were natural
The coast, not just the site cliffs, castle ruins on sea stacks, tiny harbours and mile-long strands run for miles in both directions, strung together by a single coast path you can walk in sections or all at once
Real working villages the bases here are a distillery village on a salmon river and a Victorian resort with two beaches and a championship links, rather than a car park with a gift shop attached
Northern light this far north the June evenings stretch past ten o'clock, and the low winter sun on wet black basalt is why photographers keep coming back in the months everyone else writes off
Best time to visit
May-Jul, Sep
13-17° days
55.206° N, 6.523° W
UTC+1 · Europe/London
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Weather & when to go to Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best May-Jul, Sep
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
January is this coast at its worst - dark by mid-afternoon, wet, and wide open to Atlantic gales that shut cliff paths and cancel island ferries at a few hours' notice - and the months either side are not much kinder. Midsummer brings the opposite problem, with coach parties filling the middle of the day, so aim for the first or last hours of light; and note that the biggest swell, the emptiest stones and the wildest sea are exactly what brings surfers and photographers here in the dead of winter.
Top things to do in Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
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Giant's Causeway - the columns themselves
scenic nature wildlife 👍 PopularThree linked promontories of interlocking basalt, the Grand, Middle and Little Causeways, most of the columns six-sided and jointed like stacked coins. Pick your way out to the Wishing Chair, look back at the columns rising sheer up the cliff as the Organ, and find the Giant's Boot on the shore at Port Noffer. Go in the first or last hour of daylight: the site is smaller than the photographs suggest, and the difference between having it to yourself and sharing it with several coaches is entirely a matter of timing.
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Causeway clifftop trail - Shepherd's Steps and Hamilton's Seat
hiking scenic ⭐ Highly recommendedAlmost everyone walks the tarmac road down and back. The better loop stays high, running east along the cliff edge above the Amphitheatre and Port na Spaniagh, where the Chimney Stacks stand out from the headland and the Armada wreck lies somewhere below, then drops the 162 stone treads of the Shepherd's Steps to the shore. Hamilton's Seat at the far end is the view that makes sense of the whole coast.
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Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge - the salmon fishermen's crossing
adventure scenic 👍 PopularA rope-and-plank span slung across a chasm from the mainland to a rock island that fishermen once crossed to net salmon on their way round the headland. It is short, and the drop to green water below is the entire point. Entry is by timed slot, it fills fast in summer, and it closes without warning when the wind gets up - which on this coast it regularly does.
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Old Bushmills Distillery - the licence of 1608
food history 👍 PopularThe village distillery on the River Bush trades on a grant to distil made in 1608, which makes its claim to be the world's oldest licensed whiskey distillery hard to beat. Tours run through the mash house, the copper stills that give the triple-distilled spirit its softness, and a warehouse where the smell does most of the talking, ending in a tasting.
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Dunluce Castle - the ruin on the sea stack
history scenicA MacDonnell stronghold perched on a basalt crag between Bushmills and Portrush, cut off from the mainland by a chasm and undercut by a sea cave you can hear from the courtyard. Tradition has part of the kitchen block falling into the sea with the servants in it, and the family moving out soon after. It is unmissable from the coast road and better still from the footpath on the headland to the east.
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Ballintoy Harbour and White Park Bay - the coast at its wildest
scenic hiking ⭐ Highly recommendedA hairpin lane drops through the rock to a miniature harbour of white stone and black sea stacks, one of the most filmed corners of Northern Ireland. Ten minutes west, White Park Bay is a mile of pale sand backed by dunes, usually with cattle grazing down onto the beach and hardly anyone else on it. The path between them, and on to the hamlet at Portbraddan, is the best short walk on the coast.
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Causeway Coast Way - Portstewart to Ballycastle on foot
hiking scenicThe waymarked long-distance path runs the full coast in a few days, over strands, along clifftops and through the villages. Few people walk all of it; the stretch from the Causeway east past Dunseverick Castle and its little waterfall to Ballintoy is the day that carries the best of it, and the coastal bus makes a one-way walk easy in summer.
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Giant's Causeway and Bushmills Railway - the narrow-gauge line to the stones
history scenicA two-mile heritage line runs from Bushmills along the dunes to a halt near the Causeway, on part of the trackbed of the Victorian tramway that once brought day trippers from Portrush and was the first in the world to run on hydroelectric power. It keeps a seasonal timetable and is a slow novelty rather than transport, which is exactly why children love it.
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Portrush strands and Whiterocks - the north coast surf
surfing adventureEast Strand runs from the town below Royal Portrush's dunes to the limestone arches and caves of Whiterocks, and this stretch is where surfing in Northern Ireland actually happens. The water is cold enough for a decent wetsuit in any month, and the swell that makes it worthwhile arrives with the autumn and winter storms rather than in the calm of summer. Beginners get gentler days at Portstewart Strand, further west.
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Dulse and yellowman - the north Antrim taste test
foodDried dulse, a purple-black seaweed picked off the rocks and eaten straight from the bag, salty and chewy and an acquired taste; yellowman, a brittle golden honeycomb toffee, is the sweet half of the pairing that north Antrim has eaten together for generations. Add crab and lobster landed at the small harbours, chips on the seafront, and soda and potato bread with breakfast.
Best areas to stay in Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Bushmills
Closest to the site $$Whiskey village minutes from the stones
Explore hotels in Bushmills →
Portrush
Best links & beaches $$Victorian seaside resort, two strands
Explore hotels in Portrush →
Portstewart
Calmer resort $$Quieter promenade town, huge beach
Explore hotels in Portstewart →
Portballintrae
Quiet & self-catering $$Small quiet bay between the two
Explore hotels in Portballintrae →
Ballycastle
Gateway to Rathlin $Working town at the eastern end
Explore hotels in Ballycastle →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
Getting to & around Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
Getting there
Fly into Belfast International and drive about an hour up the A26, or take the train to Coleraine and Portrush and pick up the coastal bus from there
Flight
Belfast International Airport (BFS)
Roughly an hour north on the A26 through Ballymena and Ballymoney, and a hire car from the terminal is much the simplest way in. Without one it is a coach into Belfast, the train up to Coleraine and a local bus along the coast, which works but eats most of a morning. City of Derry Airport is closer, about fifty minutes west, but serves only a handful of routes; Dublin is about three and a half hours by road and often the cheaper long-haul arrival.
Train
Coleraine, then Portrush
NI Railways runs Belfast to Coleraine in a little under two hours, with a short branch line on to Portrush. There is no railway east of Portrush, so the last leg to Bushmills, Ballintoy or Ballycastle is by bus or taxi
Coach
Coleraine and Ballymoney
Translink's express coaches from Belfast serve the north coast towns; useful if you land at the airport and want to avoid the city centre change
Drive
About an hour and a quarter from Belfast on the M2 and A26. The alternative is two and a half hours up the Antrim Coast Road through the Glens, an 1830s engineering job cut along the base of the cliffs, and it is by far the better half of the journey if you have the daylight
Ferry
Belfast and Larne
Car ferries from Cairnryan in Scotland land at both ports, each under two hours' drive from the coast; the usual approach for anyone bringing a car over from Britain
Getting around
Car
The default, and close to essential if you want the smaller headlands and harbours. Lanes are narrow and hedged, the car parks at the popular sites fill by mid-morning in summer, and the coast road itself is the reason to have one
TBC
Walking
Bushmills to the Causeway is a walkable few miles on the old tramway route, Portballintrae joins it over the dunes at Runkerry, and the waymarked coast path links most of the sights end to end
Free
Bus
Translink services run the coastal corridor between Coleraine, Portrush, Bushmills and Ballycastle, with extra seasonal stops at the main sites in summer; timetables thin sharply in winter and on Sundays, so check the last departure before you commit to a one-way walk
TBC
Visitor centre shuttle
A minibus runs the steep road from the clifftop centre down to the stones and back for anyone who would rather not walk it; the walk down takes about ten minutes and the walk back rather more
TBC
Heritage railway
The narrow-gauge line between Bushmills and a halt near the Causeway runs a seasonal timetable and is worth doing for its own sake rather than as a way of getting anywhere
TBC
Taxi
Bookable in Portrush, Bushmills and Ballycastle and the standard fallback after the last bus; app-based cars are patchy outside the resort towns, so save a local number
TBC
Bike
A signed coastal cycle route follows the coast for most of its length, rolling rather than steep; the wind, not the gradient, decides how the day goes, so plan to ride with it rather than into it
TBC
Day trips from Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
Rathlin Island
Full daySeabird island
Northern Ireland's only inhabited offshore island, an L of cliffs and bog with more seabirds than people. The West Light seabird centre is an upside-down lighthouse with the lamp at the bottom, and from a viewing platform below it you look straight across at stacks solid with guillemots, razorbills and puffins; the puffins are ashore from spring until midsummer and gone by August. Seals haul out at the harbour and Robert the Bruce's cave story belongs here. Book the ferry ahead in summer and expect cancellations in a blow.
Getting there
ferry | car | bus
About 30 min by car to Ballycastle, then 25-50 min by ferry
Derry / Londonderry
Full dayWalled city
The only completely walled city in Ireland, and you can walk the full circuit of the seventeenth-century ramparts in an hour, looking down into the Bogside and its murals. Add the Guildhall, the Tower Museum's Armada collection and the Peace Bridge across the Foyle. The train line from Coleraine hugs the river and the sea for much of the way and is one of the great short rail rides in these islands.
Getting there
car | train | bus
About 1 hr by car, or by train from Coleraine
The Dark Hedges and the screen locations
Half dayBeech avenue
An avenue of beeches planted by the Stuart family in the eighteenth century to impress visitors arriving at their house, now grown into a tunnel of interlocking branches and famous worldwide as a road in Game of Thrones. It is short, it is best early, and the lane is closed to traffic, so park properly and walk in. Pair it with the harbour at Ballintoy, the caves at Cushendun and the long strand at Downhill, all of which appeared on screen too.
Getting there
car | tour
20-30 min by car, or by guided tour
Glens of Antrim and the coast road
Full dayGlens and clifftop drive
Nine green valleys run down to the sea on the eastern side of the county, and the road that links them was blasted along the base of the cliffs in the 1830s. Glenariff has a waterfall walk through a wooded gorge, Cushendun has its sea caves and a village built to look Cornish, and the single-track detour over Torr Head to Murlough Bay gives you Scotland across the water on a clear day.
Getting there
car
1-2 hr by car depending how far you go
Downhill Demesne and Mussenden Temple
Half dayClifftop rotunda
A domed stone rotunda built as a library on the very edge of a cliff by an eccentric earl bishop, with the ruins of his mansion and its walled garden behind and a train line running through a tunnel directly below. The beach beneath runs for miles towards the Binevenagh escarpment, and it is the most photographed clifftop in the north after the Causeway itself.
Getting there
car | train
30-40 min by car, or the train to Castlerock
Belfast
Full dayCapital city
The city where the Titanic was built, with a museum on the slipways to prove it, plus the black cab political tours, the Victorian pubs and a covered market. The Ulster Museum is the direct sequel to a day on the Causeway Coast: the gold and jewellery recovered from the Armada galleass wrecked below the cliffs is on display there.
Getting there
car | train | bus
About 1 hr by car, or under 2 hr by train
A little history of Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
The rock came first. Around sixty million years ago, as the North Atlantic tore open, fissures across this corner of Ireland flooded the landscape with basalt lava. One thick lava lake cooled slowly and evenly enough that as it contracted it cracked from the surface down into a honeycomb of columns, most of them six-sided, some four, some eight, about forty thousand of them altogether. The same flows surface again across the water at Fingal's Cave on Staffa, which is why the folk explanation is so satisfying: the giant Fionn mac Cumhaill built a road to Scotland to fight a rival, then tore it up behind him when he saw the size of the man coming the other way.
Europe only learned about it in the 1690s, when an account of the columns reached the Royal Society in London, and the argument that followed over whether basalt was laid down by water or by fire ran for the better part of a century. Painted views made the place famous, the Victorians brought an electric tramway along the cliffs, and the coast filled with the wrecks, castles and stories that surround it now: a Spanish Armada galleass lost below the headland, a clifftop stronghold that gave up its kitchen to the sea, a distillery licence older than most countries, and an ancient royal seat at Dunseverick a few miles east that was said to mark the end of one of the great roads out of Tara.
Basalt lava floods north Antrim and cools into the columns as the North Atlantic begins to open
The Armada galleass Girona is wrecked at Lacada Point below the cliffs with the loss of almost everyone aboard
A licence to distil is granted in the Bushmills area, the basis of the distillery's claim to be the world's oldest licensed
Part of Dunluce Castle's kitchen block is said to have fallen into the sea, hastening the family's move inland
An account of the columns is presented to the Royal Society in London, the first published description
Susanna Drury's painted views win a Dublin Society premium and, engraved, carry the Causeway across Europe
The tramway from Portrush opens, the first in the world to run on hydroelectric power, drawn from the River Bush
Divers relocate the Girona and recover the gold and jewellery now held in Belfast
The Giant's Causeway and Causeway Coast is inscribed as a World Heritage Site, still Northern Ireland's only one
A narrow-gauge heritage railway reopens part of the old tramway route between Bushmills and the Causeway
A grass-roofed visitor centre cut into the clifftop opens, replacing the one destroyed by fire in 2000
The Open returns to Royal Portrush after an absence of 68 years
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Workable
Power
Type G
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+44
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FAQs about Giant's Causeway (Bushmills)
▸ When is the best time to visit the Giant's Causeway?
May, June, July and September are the pick: the mildest and driest stretch on a coast that is never truly hot, with daylight running past ten in the evening at midsummer. August is warm enough but busiest. January is the month to avoid on weather - dark by mid-afternoon, wet and gale-prone - though it is also when the Atlantic swell is biggest, the stones are nearly empty and the light on wet basalt is at its most dramatic, which is why surfers and photographers turn up anyway.
▸ Do you have to pay to see the Giant's Causeway?
No. The path down to the stones is a public right of way and walking it costs nothing, as does the clifftop trail and the coast path in either direction. What is ticketed is the National Trust visitor centre experience and its car park, and parking anywhere else nearby is scarce and heavily restricted, so if you are not using the centre, arrive early, park legally in Bushmills or Portballintrae and walk or take the bus in.
▸ How many days do you need on the Causeway Coast?
Two full days covers the Causeway itself, the clifftop walk, the rope bridge, Dunluce and the distillery without rushing. A third or fourth buys you Rathlin Island, Derry or a day in the Glens, and gives you a spare day for the weather to turn, which on this coast it will.
▸ Can you get there without a car?
Yes, with planning. The train reaches Coleraine and Portrush, and Translink buses run the coastal corridor through Bushmills to Ballycastle, with extra seasonal stops at the main sites. The catch is frequency: services thin outside summer and on Sundays, and a missed connection can cost you a site. Many visitors combine the train with one guided day along the coast, which handles the awkward gaps between the Causeway, the rope bridge and the Dark Hedges.
▸ Is the Giant's Causeway worth it if you have already seen the photographs?
Be honest with yourself about scale: the famous stepping-stone promontory is a modest headland, and people who arrive expecting a vast field of columns can feel briefly deflated. What the photographs cannot give you is the cliff wall of columns above the bay, the sound of the sea moving through the joints, and the walk along the top of it all. Treat the stones as one stop on a coastal day rather than the destination and it delivers every time.
▸ Where is the best base, Bushmills or Portrush?
Bushmills if you want to be closest to the Causeway, in a quiet village with the distillery and a footpath to the coast. Portrush if you are travelling without a car or with children, since the trains and buses run from there and it has the beaches, the restaurants and the amusements. Portstewart splits the difference more quietly, and Ballycastle suits anyone heading for Rathlin or the Glens.
▸ Which Game of Thrones locations are on this coast?
Several of the best known sit within half an hour of each other: the harbour at Ballintoy, the beech avenue of the Dark Hedges, the quarry and cliffs at Larrybane beside the rope bridge, the sea caves at Cushendun and the long strand below Downhill. All of them are free to walk up to, and a guided day is the easy way to link the ones without parking.
▸ Is it expensive?
The best of the coast is the cheap part. Walking to the stones, the clifftop trail, the beaches, the coast path and the castle-topped headlands cost nothing at all. The paid items are the visitor centre experience and its car park, the rope bridge, the distillery tour and entry to the castle, each modest on its own and each easy to skip. Accommodation is where the money goes, and it rises sharply in July and August and around big golf events.
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