POSTED FROM

PORTRUSH

CO. ANTRIM · IE

Portrush
Port Rois

The Causeway Coast
STOP 09 / 09

Port Rois · Co. Antrim

A basalt finger pointing at the Atlantic, a links course on either side, chips at the end.

Portrush is a Victorian seaside town that the railway built. The line from Belfast reached the headland in 1855 and the town followed — boarding houses, a promenade, a ballroom or two, and three beaches close enough that you could walk between them in fifteen minutes if the wind let you. The peninsula it all sits on is basalt, the same dark rock that breaks into hexagons up the road at the Causeway. Stand at Ramore Head on a clear day and you can see Donegal one way, Scotland the other, the Skerries half a mile out, and the Atlantic doing whatever the Atlantic feels like doing.

What you need to know: this is a resort town that goes through three lives a year. In summer it fills up — caravans, families, stag parties, queues for chips and Barry's amusements. In winter it empties and turns moody and is, frankly, better for it. And then twice now (2019, 2025) The Open has rolled through and stuffed the place full of marshals, marquees and a quarter of a million golf fans, and the town has produced its best self for a fortnight before settling back. The version of Portrush you get depends on the week you pick.

The honest pitch: come for a long weekend, stay outside July, walk the strands at dawn, eat at the harbour, take the train in from Belfast or Coleraine so you don't have to think about parking. The Causeway is twenty minutes east, Dunluce Castle five minutes west, and there are coastal walks in either direction that make the drive worthwhile on their own. Portrush works as a base. It also works as an end-of-the-line in the literal sense — the railway stops here, so does the headland, and that's not nothing.

Population

6,150 (2021)

Founded

Resort grew with the railway, 1855 onwards

Coords

55.2058° N, 6.6553° 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 Ramore Head

The town sits on a peninsula.

A mile-long basalt finger pushed out into the Atlantic. East Strand on one side, West Strand on the other, and the harbour tucked into the elbow on the south.

Walks & outings → 02 Royal Portrush

The Open came back. Twice.

Founded 1888, Harry Colt's Dunluce Links since 1933. Hosted The Open in 1951, again in 2019, and again in 2025 — the only club outside Great Britain to hold it.

Stories & lore → 03 The harbour

One family, six rooms.

The Ramore complex — Wine Bar, Harbour Bar, Harbour Bistro, Neptune & Prawn — runs most of what you'll eat or drink down here. Queues out the door in July. Worth knowing the off-peak hours.

Food & drink →

02 / 09

The pubs.

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

The Harbour Bar

Guinness, gas, gin upstairs

Traditional bar

On the harbour, part of the Ramore complex but the oldest piece of it. The front bar is the traditional room — pints, talk, regulars. Upstairs the Harbour Gin Bar does wood-fired snacks, a long gin list and live music most evenings in season.

Kelly's Complex

Saturday-night institution

Hotel & nightclub

Bushmills Road, on the way out of town. Started as barn dances in the 1960s, now a multi-room complex with bars, club nights and a hotel above. If you're under thirty and out on a Saturday in summer, you end up here. If you're not, you don't.

The Atlantic Bar

Sea view, sundowners

Hotel bar

On Main Street, looking out over West Strand. Less hectic than the harbour, glassed-in front so you can watch the surfers and the weather without being in either.

The Anchor Bar

Locals, sport, no pretence

Town local

Opposite the railway station end of Main Street. The kind of pub that doesn't bother with a website. Match days are loud. Most other days it's quiet enough to hear yourself.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Ramore Wine Bar	Bistro	££	The flagship of the harbour cluster. No bookings, big menu, queue forms outside from about half-five in summer. Steaks, seafood, pasta — the kind of place that does everything competently and one or two things very well. Get there early or after eight.
Neptune & Prawn	Asian small plates	££	Same family as the Wine Bar, two doors down. Pan-Asian sharing plates, an upstairs cocktail bar with the best sunset window in town. Bookable, unlike the Wine Bar, which is the main reason to come here instead.
Harbour Bistro	Grill & seafood	££	Tucked in behind the Harbour Bar. Wood-fired grill, steaks from JD Hart in Coleraine, the standard Ramore-complex thing of competent cooking and reliable service. Quieter than the Wine Bar.
Babushka Kitchen Café	Café	£	A glass box on the West Strand promenade. Brunch, cakes, decent coffee, and a view straight down the beach. Closes mid-afternoon. Walk-up only.
The Arcadia Café	Beach café	£	The 1920s Chalmers building on East Strand, restored after a near-demolition. Not a ballroom any more — coffee, ice cream, paddling pools out the back. Worth a stop for the building as much as the flat white.
55 Degrees North	Restaurant	££	Causeway Street end of town, glass walls facing the sea. À la carte and an early-bird menu. Steady kitchen, big windows, sunset tables go first. Book ahead in summer.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
The Adelphi Portrush	Boutique hotel	Main Street, four-star, restored Victorian seafront hotel. The Atlantic Bar downstairs. Sea-view rooms cost more for a reason.
Kelly's Hotel	Hotel	Above the Kelly's Complex on Bushmills Road. Twenty-three rooms. Convenient if you're going to end up downstairs anyway. Less convenient if you're not.
Royal Court Hotel	Hotel	Out on Whiterocks Road, between Portrush and Dunluce. Older, perched above the cliffs, view straight at the castle. A 15-minute walk into town along the coast path.
Self-catering on the strands	Self-catering	Most of the houses backing onto East and West Strand let by the week in summer. Book in January for July. Off-peak the same houses are half the price.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

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

1951, 2019, 2025

The Open

Royal Portrush is the only golf club outside Great Britain to host The Open. It first did so in 1951 — Max Faulkner won — and then nothing for 68 years until the championship returned in 2019, with Shane Lowry winning by six in front of a record 237,750 spectators. The Open came back in July 2025 and Scottie Scheffler won by four. Two new holes (the seventh and eighth) were built for 2019 and stayed; the old 17th and 18th were retired. The town has now done the Open thing twice in six years and largely knows what it's doing.

Since 1926

Barry's Amusements

Barry's opened on Eglinton Street in 1926 — Francesco Trufelli, an ex-trapeze artist with the Royal Italian Circus, and his wife Evelyn Chipperfield, of the English fairground Chipperfields, were invited by the railway company to put their travelling fairground on a permanent site beside Portrush station. It's been there ever since. At 2.23 acres it's the largest amusement park in Northern Ireland. The big wooden rollercoaster on the back wall is a generational rite of passage.

A ballroom and a save

The Arcadia

Built on East Strand in the 1920s by local businessman R.A. Chalmers, the Arcadia got its name and its little upstairs ballroom by 1926. In 1953 a Bournemouth entrepreneur called Bert Blundell expanded it and the New Arcadia Ballroom became one of Northern Ireland's showband venues — Dave Glover and his Orchestra were the resident act for years. The building was nearly demolished in the 1990s; locals saved it, and it was restored in the early 2000s. The ballroom is now a children's play area. The shell is the same.

The basalt and the boats

Ramore Head

The peninsula the town sits on is the same Antrim basalt that hexagons up at the Causeway. Look down off Ramore Head into the water on the right day and you can see the columns continuing under the sea. Half a mile offshore lie the Skerries — a string of low rocky islands that have wrecked plenty of ships and now mostly host seabirds and the occasional seal.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

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

Ramore Head loop From the harbour, up around the headland, back along West Strand promenade. Do it before breakfast. The Atlantic decides what the walk is — sometimes flat as a millpond, sometimes you'll come back salted.

2 kmdistance

40 mintime

East Strand to Whiterocks From the Arcadia along East Strand and Curran Strand to the Whiterocks limestone cliffs. Sand the whole way at low tide. The cliffs ahead get worked into arches and caves — Wishing Arch, Elephant Rock, Lion's Paw. Time the tide before you set out.

3 miles one waydistance

1 hourtime

Whiterocks to Dunluce Castle Pick up the cliff path above Whiterocks and follow it east to Dunluce. The MacDonnell castle ruins on a basalt stack are the photo. The kitchen reportedly fell into the sea one night with the cooks in it. The cliff edge is real either way.

4.5 km one waydistance

1.5 hourstime

West Strand & the prom The shorter strand, the older promenade, the Victorian terraces lined up behind it. Surfers in the morning, dog walkers all day. Coffee at Babushka at the end.

1.5 kmdistance

30 mintime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar–May

Light back, daffodils up at Dunluce, golf opening up at Portrush and Portstewart. The Open is in July from now on, so this is the calm.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun–Aug

Resort-town full. Caravans, day-trippers, queues. Open Championship years (next is TBC) you book a year out or you don't come. East Strand is wide enough to absorb most of it.

◐ Mind yourself

Autumn

Sep–Oct

The locals' season. Storms rolling in, the Wine Bar bookable again, the cliff path at its best. Most things still open through October half-term.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov–Feb

Half the cafés shut, half the rentals shut, the wind has the place to itself. The Ramore complex stays open and the strands are spectacular when the squalls hit.

◐ 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.

Driving in on a July Saturday

The peninsula has one road in. Park-and-ride works some weekends, the train is better the rest. Take the train from Coleraine or Belfast and skip the whole problem.

Queueing 90 minutes for the Wine Bar at 7pm

The Ramore Wine Bar doesn't book. In July you'll wait. Eat at Neptune & Prawn (same family, takes bookings) or come at 5:30 or after 8:30.

The "Causeway in 90 minutes" coach

It picks you up, dumps you at the visitor centre, and takes you back. You'll have driven past Dunluce, Portballintrae and the cliff path. Hire a small car or use the 402 bus and stop where you like.

Booking the Open without a ticket plan

Royal Portrush goes on ballot a year ahead and the town goes with it. Without a confirmed Championship ticket and a confirmed bed, an Open week visit is mostly queueing for things you can't get into.

Getting there.

By car

Belfast to Portrush is about 1h 5m, 60 miles (M2 then A26). Derry is 35 miles, Coleraine is 5 miles, Bushmills 6 miles. Free parking is scarce in summer; the Dunluce Avenue and Causeway Street car parks are paid and usually fine outside school holidays.

By bus

Translink Goldliner 218 from Belfast Grand Central is direct. The Ulsterbus 402 Causeway Rambler runs Coleraine–Portrush–Bushmills–Causeway–Ballycastle and is the way to do the coast without a car.

By train

Portrush is the terminus of the line from Coleraine, which connects to the Belfast–Derry line. Belfast Grand Central to Portrush is about 1h 50m, hourly most of the day. The station was rebuilt in 2019 — glass and skylights, walk straight onto Eglinton Street.

By air

Belfast International (BFS) is 50 miles. City of Derry (LDY) is 30 miles and closer to the Causeway end. Dublin is 3 hours by road.