Ballycastle, Baile an Chaistil, Co. Antrim

Baile an Chaistil · Co. Antrim

Where the Glens meet the Causeway Coast, and the ferry leaves for Rathlin.

Ballycastle sits at the seam where the Glens of Antrim run out of glen and the Causeway Coast starts pretending it's a different sort of place. It's a working town with a ferry pier, a beach, a Diamond at the top of the hill, and a long memory. The bus from Belfast comes in past the convent. The boats go out to Rathlin twice a day in summer and once in winter, weather permitting.

What you need to know: the town does two things hard. The last week of August it does the Ould Lammas Fair - one of the oldest fairs in Ireland, charter dating to 1606, with stalls down both sides of every street and tens of thousands of people eating yellowman and dulse. The other fifty-one weeks it does its job quietly: school run, fishing boats, a few coffee shops, a hotel with a Marconi-themed bar because Marconi did genuinely send signals from here in 1898.

Don't try to do Ballycastle in a morning on the way to the Giant's Causeway. The town rewards a slow day. Walk out to Fair Head. Get the ferry to Rathlin and don't come back till the last sailing. Find the pub on Castle Street that's been in the same family for fourteen generations and listen to a session there. Then drive back along the coast road through Cushendun in the dark, and tell us we were wrong.

Population

5,628

Walk score

Harbour to Diamond in 8 minutes

Coords

55.2017° N, 6.2531° W

01 / 09

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The Fair

Last Monday and Tuesday of August.

The Ould Lammas Fair has been running since at least 1606, when Randall MacDonnell got the charter. Sixty thousand people, yellowman toffee, and dulse off a stall.

Stories & lore → 02 The crossing

Six miles of sea to Rathlin.

Two ferries from the harbour. Twenty-five minutes on the fast one, around forty on the Spirit of Rathlin. Puffins in summer, choughs all year.

Walks & outings → 03 The cliffs

Fair Head looms east of town.

Northern Ireland's biggest expanse of climbable rock. The clifftop loop is short, the drop is not. Look across to Rathlin, the Mull of Kintyre, sometimes Islay.

Walks & outings →

02 / 09

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

House of McDonnell

Trad sessions, Friday nights

Heritage pub

71 Castle Street. Same family since 1766 - fourteen generations. The interior is Grade A listed, last redecorated in the mid-1800s and very firmly not since. CAMRA call it a great classic. They are right.

The Central Bar

Sport, pints, talk

Locals' pub

Ann Street. Where the town drinks when the town isn't doing anything in particular. No frills, no menu nonsense, just the pub doing pub.

Marconi's Bar

Sea view, food till late

Hotel bar

Inside the Marine Hotel on the seafront. Named for the man whose engineers sent the first commercial wireless signal from this stretch of coast in 1898. Pizza, pints, view of the Atlantic.

O'Connor's Bar

Music nights

Town-centre pub

Ann Street. Trad and ballad sessions when they're on. Decent stout. The kind of place that fills up on Lammas Fair night and you won't get near the bar.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Thyme & Co	Café & deli	££	Quay Road. Open since 2007, run by Tom and Eimear Mullin. Soup, sandwiches, traybakes, the lot - sourced locally and done properly. Lunch only. Get there before 1pm or queue.
The Cellar	Bistro	£££	Down the steps in the Diamond. Church pews, fireplace, 46 covers. Local seafood, a proper wine list, the boats supply them direct. Book on a weekend.
Morton's	Fish & chips	£	The chipper. Fresh haddock, proper chips. Eat them on the seafront and watch the gulls plot. They will win.
Marconi's Bistro	Hotel restaurant	££	Marine Hotel. Sea-view dining, pizza off the wood-fired oven, full menu till late. Good fallback when everywhere else is booked or shut.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Marine Hotel Ballycastle	Seafront hotel	51 rooms on the front, AA 4-star, B Corp certified. Many rooms over the beach. Free bike hire if you ask. Marconi's bar downstairs.
Glenmore House	Guesthouse	Whitepark Road. Family-run, big breakfast, the kind of place that gives you a flask of tea for the Fair Head walk.
Fair Head Cottages	Self-catering	Drive five minutes east and the prices halve and you get the cliffs out the back door. The walk to the head starts from your car park.
Rathlin Glamping	Across the water	Skip the town entirely. Take the morning ferry, sleep on the island, watch the sun set over Kintyre. Book months ahead in summer.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

Charter from 1606

The Ould Lammas Fair

Randall MacDonnell got the original charter in 1606 to hold six fairs a year at Dunaneeny Castle, one of which fell on the last Tuesday in August. That's the one that survived. Today it runs the last Monday and Tuesday of August, draws around sixty thousand people, and turns Castle Street and the Diamond into a wall of stalls. You come for the yellowman - a hard, brittle, honeycomb toffee broken off a slab with a hammer - and the dulse, a dried purple seaweed sold by the bag. Both are acquired tastes. Both are mandatory.

First commercial wireless, 1898

Marconi on the spire

In July 1898 Guglielmo Marconi's engineers used the spire of the old Catholic church as a mast and sent the world's first commercial wireless telegraph transmission to the East Lighthouse on Rathlin Island, six miles offshore. There's a monument over the harbour to mark it. The Marine Hotel named its bar after him. The signal was a request for ship arrival times - Lloyd's of London were paying for it, because before this they had to row out to Rathlin to see who was coming through the North Channel.

The MacDonnells of Castle Street

Fourteen generations

The House of McDonnell on Castle Street has been a pub in the same family since 1766. Fourteen generations. It started as a spirit grocery with stables for coach horses, and the layout is more or less unchanged - long narrow snug, mahogany bar, the kind of interior that's now Grade A listed because nobody had the heart to modernise it. CAMRA put it on their national heritage register. The trad session on a Friday night is one of the best on the north coast.

The Ulster Cycle landed here

Deirdre of the Sorrows

Tradition has it that Deirdre and the Sons of Uisneach landed back in Ireland at Ballycastle Bay, just under Fair Head, after their exile in Scotland. It didn't end well - Conchobar mac Nessa had laid a trap, the brothers were killed, and Deirdre took her own life rather than be married to the king. The story is one of the Three Sorrows of Irish storytelling. You can stand at the foot of Fair Head, look across to the Mull of Kintyre, and see exactly the crossing they were said to have made.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

Fair Head clifftop loop Park at the farm (£3). Out along the clifftop in a clockwise direction, back across the open grassland past Lough na Crannóige. Drops of 100m straight to the sea - keep dogs and small children well back. Views of Rathlin, the Mull of Kintyre, sometimes Islay.

4-5 km loopdistance

1.5-2 hourstime

Knocklayd The hill behind the town. Moderate slog up through forestry then open mountain to the cairn at 514m. On a clear day you can see the whole north coast and across to Donegal. Boggy on top - proper boots.

13 km returndistance

5-6 hourstime

Rathlin Island west Get the morning ferry, walk or shuttle to the West Light Seabird Centre. Puffins April to July, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes by the thousand. Last ferry back is your deadline. Don't miss it.

10 km returndistance

Full daytime

The strand to Pans Rocks From the harbour east along the beach to the rock pools at low tide. Easy underfoot, good for kids, and you're back in town in time for chips at Morton's.

3 km returndistance

45 mintime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Quiet, lambs on Knocklayd, the puffins arriving on Rathlin. Light is sharp.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Lammas week (last Mon-Tue of August) the town is full to the rafters. Beautiful, but book everything months out or stay away.

◐ Mind yourself

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Storms on Fair Head, sessions back in the pubs, Rathlin still running ferries. Best time of year.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Half the cafés shut. The Rathlin ferry runs but weather can cancel. Pubs are warmer than ever and you'll have Fair Head to yourself.

◐ Mind yourself

08 / 09

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

The Causeway in a coach from here

It's 25 minutes by car. Do it yourself in a small car at 9am or after 4pm and you'll have it half-empty. The coach trips show up between 11 and 3, which is exactly when you shouldn't.

Lammas Fair if you don't like crowds

Sixty thousand people through a town of five thousand. It's brilliant if you want it. It's a nightmare if you don't. Pick your week deliberately.

The dulse if you've never had seaweed

It tastes like the sea concentrated into chewy purple leather. Locals love it. Visitors mostly don't. Buy the smallest bag they sell before committing.

Driving Fair Head to the cliff edge

There isn't a cliff-edge car park. The walk in from the farm is the point. People who try to shortcut it end up reversing down a single-track lane while a sheep judges them.

Getting there.

By car

Belfast to Ballycastle is 1h 15m on the A26 / A44. Coleraine is 35 minutes west. Cushendun is 25 minutes south on the coast road - the prettier way in.

By bus

Translink Ulsterbus 217 from Belfast Grand Central, 2h. The 402 runs along the coast to Coleraine and the Causeway.

By train

Nearest station is Ballymoney (40 minutes by bus) or Coleraine (50 minutes). Then bus.

By air

Belfast International is 1h 20m by car. City of Derry is 1h 10m.

Next on the tour

Co. Antrim

Cushendun

Twenty-five minutes south on the coast road. Cornish-style village by Clough Williams-Ellis, the Mad Man's Window cave, and the start of the Glens proper.

Co. Antrim

Bushmills

Thirty minutes west. The world's oldest licensed distillery (1608) and the gateway to the Causeway. Stay for the tour, eat at the Bushmills Inn.

Co. Antrim

Ballymoney

Inland market town with the train station and the Joey Dunlop memorial garden. Where the road turns south toward Belfast.