Ballymoney, Baile Monaidh, Co. Antrim

Baile Monaidh · Co. Antrim

Inland market town on the Belfast-Derry line. Joey Dunlop is buried here, and the family still pulls the pints.

Ballymoney is the kind of inland Antrim town that doesn't make tourist itineraries unless you're a motorcycle person, and then it goes straight to the top. Joey Dunlop was born here, lived here, ran a pub here, and is buried here. The Honda-commissioned bronze on Seymour Street shows him on his SP1. The pub his family still runs is fifty yards away. If you came north for the Causeway and the cliffs, this is the town that reminds you the inland part of Antrim has its own gravity.

It was a market town first - linen, cattle, horse fairs, the first and third Thursdays of every month, all the way back to the 1830s. The Town Hall on High Street is still the centre of it. The Drama Festival, founded in 1933 and the oldest in Ireland, runs every spring. The Ballymoney Show, founded in 1902, runs every summer. Neither pretends to be more than what it is.

Stay an afternoon. Walk to the Memorial Garden. Have a pint in Joey's. Drive out the Frosses Road south, or out to Dervock and Stranocum north. Ballymoney is a base, not a destination - but it's an honest one, and the trains run.

Population

11,048

Walk score

Town centre in 10 minutes

Coords

55.0710° N, 6.5080° 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 Joey

Five Formula 1 TT titles. Ballymoney born and lost.

Joey Dunlop, 1952-2000. Five consecutive Formula 1 TT World Championships, 1982 to 1986. Twenty-six Isle of Man TT wins. Killed leading a 125cc race in Tallinn, Estonia, on a wet July day in 2000. The town never quite stopped grieving.

Stories & lore → 02 The line

On the train from Belfast to Derry.

Hourly trains each way, Monday to Saturday. The 1902 Berkeley Deane Wise station is still in use - cottage-style, with cast ironwork from Glasgow's Saracen Foundry. One of the prettier stops on the line.

Getting there → 03 Around it

Dervock, Stranocum, the Frosses Road.

Five miles to Dervock. A bit further to Stranocum, where the Bregagh Road runs into the Dark Hedges. The A26 south to Ballymena is the Frosses Road - Scots pines planted by Charles Lanyon in 1839.

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:

Joey's Bar

Bikes, trophies, family

Pub

Seymour Street, fifty yards from the Memorial Garden. Bought by Joey Dunlop in the 1980s, still run by his family. Bikes on the wall, trophies behind the bar, conversation about road racing on tap. Don't go expecting a museum - it's a working local that happens to have history.

The Diamond Bar

Snugs, occasional trad

Traditional pub

2 High Street, beside the Town Clock. Cosy snugs, larger room at the back, occasional trad sessions. The kind of pub where the regulars know who's at the door before they've turned around.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Bob & Berts	Café	£	The NI mini-chain. Coffee, traybakes, soup, all-day breakfast. Reliable. Open when nothing else is.
Steel Yard Cafe	Café & lunches	£	Local spuds, cut fresh, fried right. Burgers, fries, the kind of menu that doesn't apologise for itself.
Superbites	Chipper & sit-in	£	Half chip shop, half sit-down café. Mince and potatoes, steak and chips, takeaway round the side. The kind of place a town actually eats at.
Ground Espresso Bars	Coffee	£	If you need a flat white before getting back on the train, this is it.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Manor Hotel	Hotel & bar	Town-centre hotel with restaurant and bar. Music in the bar at weekends. Not luxurious; not pretending to be.
Pinetrees B&B	Guest house	Just outside the town centre. The kind of B&B that does the breakfast properly and gives you directions to the Memorial Garden without being asked.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

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

1952-2000

Joey Dunlop

Five consecutive Formula 1 TT World Championships, 1982 to 1986. Twenty-six Isle of Man TT wins - still the record when he died. He won the 750cc and 600cc races in Tallinn on the Pirita-Kose-Kloostrimetsa circuit on 2 July 2000, then went out in the wet for the 125cc and didn't come back. The Honda-commissioned bronze on Seymour Street shows him on his SP1. His brother Robert, also a road racer, has an adjoining garden, opened in 2010 - Robert was killed at the North West 200 in 2008. Two brothers, one family, one town.

Scots pines, planted 1839

The Frosses Road

The A26 south of Ballymoney runs through a corridor of Scots pines planted by Sir Charles Lanyon - the same Lanyon who designed Queen's University Belfast - to keep the road from subsiding into the bog beneath. Fifty trees were felled in 1999 for road safety; another twenty-six in 2007. The remaining ones still arch overhead. People confuse it with the Dark Hedges. They're different roads, different trees, different stories.

Linen, fairs, the first Thursday

A market town, still

Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of 1837 records Ballymoney as a market-town with linen markets on the first and third Thursdays of every month, supplying London. The Ballymoney Show, founded 1902, is one of the oldest agricultural shows in Northern Ireland. The Drama Festival, founded 1933, is the oldest in Ireland. Neither has been stopped by anything, including the Troubles.

The narrow gauge that was

Dervock and Stranocum

From 1880 to 1950, a 17-mile narrow-gauge railway - the Ballycastle Railway - ran from Ballymoney out through Dervock to the coast at Ballycastle. Dervock station closed on 3 July 1950. The trackbed is still traceable in places. Stranocum is the village just before the Bregagh Road turn for the Dark Hedges, which means most coach tours pass through it without stopping. The locals consider this an improvement.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

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

Joey Dunlop Memorial Garden Seymour Street, on the corner of Castle Street. The bronze, the plaques, the adjoining garden for Robert. Quiet most days. Bikers leave flowers.

500 m from stationdistance

20 min visittime

The Frosses Road South on the A26 towards Ballymena. The Scots pine corridor is unmistakable. There's nowhere proper to stop, so don't drive it on a wet evening with low sun.

8 km drivedistance

15 mintime

The Dark Hedges North-east via Stranocum, on Bregagh Road near Armoy. The beech avenue from 1775. Get there before 9am or after 6pm if you don't want to share it with the entire internet.

12 km drivedistance

20 min by cartime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Drama Festival runs through March. Days lengthening. Frosses Road greens up.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Ballymoney Show in late June. North West 200 traffic in May around the wider area. Long evenings, and the trains are reliable.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Quiet. The pines on the Frosses Road look their best.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Short days, cold rain. The pubs are warm. The Memorial Garden is still open. Most other things aren't.

◐ 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.

Calling Ballymoney "the home of the Dark Hedges"

It isn't. The Dark Hedges are eight miles east, near Armoy and Stranocum, in a different parish. Tourist sites lump them in with Ballymoney for postcodes. Locals don't.

Mistaking the Frosses Road for the Dark Hedges

Different road. Scots pines, not beech. Planted 1839 by Lanyon to stop the road sinking into bog. No Game of Thrones connection. Just a road through trees.

Coming for nightlife

It's a market town of eleven thousand, not a session town. Two pubs worth naming. If you want music every night, the Causeway coast is half an hour north.

Getting there.

By car

M2 from Belfast to Antrim, then A26 north - about 1h 5m. Coleraine is 15 minutes north. Ballycastle is 20 minutes east.

By bus

Translink Goldline 218 between Belfast and Coleraine stops in Ballymoney. Local buses to Ballycastle and Ballymena.

By train

Ballymoney station is on the Belfast-Derry line. Hourly each way, Mon-Sat, less on Sundays. About 1h 25m from Belfast Grand Central; 45 minutes from Derry.

By air

Belfast International (BFS) is 45 minutes by car. Belfast City (BHD) is an hour. City of Derry (LDY) is 35 minutes.

Next on the tour

Co. Antrim

Ballycastle

Twenty minutes east on the old narrow-gauge line - now a road. Harbour town with the ferry to Rathlin.

Co. Antrim

Bushmills

Fifteen minutes north. The distillery, the Causeway, the coast road proper.

Co. Antrim

Ballymena

Twenty minutes south on the A26 through the Frosses pines. The other big inland Antrim town.

Co. Antrim

Portballintrae

North to the coast, a horseshoe bay tucked between Bushmills and the Causeway.

Co. Antrim

Portrush

Eighteen kilometres north-west to the resort on its basalt finger, with a links course on either side.