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Dublin to giants causeway luxury private tour
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From €7 per person
This 12-hour private tour takes you from Dublin up to Belfast and across to the north Antrim coast, covering a lot of ground in a single day in a fully licensed and insured luxury vehicle with a local English-speaking guide. The itinerary is flexible - if you want to linger somewhere or swap a stop, your guide will work with you.
The first stop in Belfast is the Titanic Quarter, birthplace of the world-famous RMS Titanic. From there, you visit the Belfast peace walls and murals - the extraordinary painted barriers that divided the city during the Troubles - which give you real insight into Northern Ireland’s past and how far things have come.
As you head north towards the coast, the route passes through some scenery made famous by Game of Thrones: the atmospheric Dark Hedges and the picturesque Ballintoy Harbour, both used as filming locations for the show.
On the coast, Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge is a stop steeped in history - a suspension bridge linking two islands, originally established hundreds of years ago to connect the lands. It’s not for anyone nervous of heights, and it does close in high winds, so availability is weather permitting.
The headline attraction is the Giant’s Causeway, where you’ll have around 2 hours to explore the extraordinary basalt columns and take in the sweeping coastal views. The legendary Fionn Mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) is said to have built the causeway, and your guide will fill you in on the story. The final stop is Dunluce Castle, a medieval ruin perched dramatically at the cliff edge - familiar to Game of Thrones fans and a genuinely impressive end to the day before the drive back to Dublin.
The tour lasts approximately 12 hours. All vehicles are fully licensed and insured. Guides are local and English-speaking. Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge may be closed in high winds - this is weather dependent. The tour allows some flexibility in the itinerary to suit your group’s preferences.
Belfast repays even the short stop this tour gives it. The Titanic Quarter is built on the slipway where the RMS Titanic was launched on 31 May 1911 - the Harland & Wolff cranes, Samson and Goliath, still stand over the Lagan and are visible from most of the city. The peace walls on the Falls and Shankill Roads are the most direct way to understand what the city went through during the Troubles and how much has changed since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. A black taxi tour with a driver who lived through it adds a human dimension that no museum replicates. Your guide can point you toward the best spots; the Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street - a Victorian gin palace owned by the National Trust and run as a working pub - is a worthwhile ten minutes if you’re passing.
The Dark Hedges on the Bregagh Road near Armoy are best before 9am or after 6pm - the beech avenue planted in 1775 gets busy once the coach traffic arrives. The nearby market town of Ballymoney is the closest hub with a train connection; it also has the Joey Dunlop Memorial Garden on Seymour Street, where a Honda-commissioned bronze of the five-time Formula 1 TT World Champion stands fifty yards from the pub his family still runs.
The Giant’s Causeway is at its most photogenic early in the morning or in low evening light, when the columns throw longer shadows and the coach numbers are lower. Your two hours gives you time to walk down to the main causeway platform and along the coastal path toward the Shepherd’s Steps, which is the view that shows you the full scale of the basalt formations stretching into the sea. The Causeway is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Nature Reserve; the path is well maintained but slippery when wet, so decent shoes are worth having. The village of Bushmills is three kilometres from the stones - if you’ve any time before or after the main stop, the Old Bushmills Distillery has been on the same stretch of water since 1784, and the Bushmills Inn’s Gas Bar is still lit by gas with peat fires and snugs along the wall.
Dunluce Castle at the end of the day sits at the north Antrim cliff edge and was partially built using the ruins of a nearby Spanish Armada shipwreck, the Girona, which broke up on the rocks below in 1588. The atmosphere in the late afternoon, with the light off the Atlantic and the castle walls against the sky, is the kind of end to a day that earns its reputation. Your guide will have the story.
Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge closes in sustained high winds - if there’s been stormy weather in the days before your tour, it’s worth asking your guide to check in advance. The site is managed by the National Trust; the walk out to the bridge from the car park is about a kilometre along the cliff edge, and the views across to Rathlin Island and Scotland on a clear day are reason enough to do the walk even if the bridge is closed. Ballycastle is a few miles east along the coast - the House of McDonnell on Castle Street has been a pub in the same family since 1766 and runs a trad session on Friday nights that’s one of the best on the north coast.