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2-Day Northern Ireland Rail Tour: Belfast, Antrim Coast, and Giant's Causeway
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From €421 per person
You head north by train from Dublin, passing through some gorgeous coastal terrain along the way, including the Glens of Antrim. After an overnight stay in Belfast, a local guide takes you along the famous Antrim Coast Road by coach - stopping in Ballycastle, walking among the extraordinary basalt columns of Giant’s Causeway, and getting great photos of Dunluce Castle perched on the clifftop. Depending on the season, you might also cross the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.
One thing worth knowing: the winter schedule (November to March) doesn’t follow the full Causeway Coastal Route. From November through March, the coach joins the tour at Ballycastle, roughly 10 minutes from the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.
Meals are listed in the itinerary as B (breakfast), L (lunch), or D (dinner).
Your Belfast overnight is unstructured - use it. The Titanic Quarter waterfront walk is 3 km, flat, and free: from the Lagan Weir along the river past Titanic Belfast, the SS Nomadic, and the Glass of Thrones windows, looping back via the Maritime Mile. It takes about an hour and it’s a good introduction to the city before your coastal day. The Titanic Hotel is right there too, in the old Harland & Wolff drawing offices where the ship was actually designed.
For an evening pint in Belfast, the Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street is the one to know - a Victorian gin palace owned by the National Trust and run as a proper working pub, with original tilework and snugs. Kelly’s Cellars on Bank Street has been open since 1720 and was where the United Irishmen plotted in 1798. Both are ten minutes’ walk from the city centre. For food, Mourne Seafood Bar on Bank Street uses their own oyster beds in Carlingford.
Ballycastle is more than a coach stop. The town sits where the Glens of Antrim meet the Causeway Coast, and if you get any free time there, Ballycastle has a pub on Castle Street - the House of McDonnell, 71 Castle Street - that’s been in the same family since 1766 and is Grade A listed because nobody modernised it. The trad session on a Friday night is one of the best on the north coast. Thyme & Co on Quay Road is the locals’ lunch spot if you need a bite before the Causeway.
Giant’s Causeway is busiest between 11am and 3pm. If your itinerary gets you there before 10:30 or after 4pm, you’ll see it at its best. The 40,000 basalt columns are genuinely extraordinary, and the mythology attached - the giant Finn McCool building a bridge to Scotland - makes more sense when you see that on a clear day you can see the Mull of Kintyre from the clifftop.
Dunluce Castle is three kilometres west of the Causeway, perched on a basalt stack above the sea. The village below it, Bushmills, is where the coach route usually stops for whiskey - the Old Bushmills Distillery holds the world’s oldest licensed whiskey distillery (licence 1608) and the proper tour runs about an hour with a tasting. If you’re at the Giant’s Causeway itself and have thirty minutes, the Giant’s Causeway and Bushmills Railway runs narrow-gauge two miles back to the village - sit on the seaward side.