Cúil Rathain · Co. Derry
A market town with a university bolted on, and the oldest address in Ireland on its southern edge.
Coleraine isn't pretty in the way the coast-road villages are pretty. It's a working market town that drew a Plantation charter in 1613, a railway in 1855, a paper mill, a salmon trade, and in 1968 a university that bolted three hundred acres of campus onto the east bank of the Bann. The result is a town that's bigger than it looks on the map and quieter than it should be on a Tuesday in July, because the students have all gone home.
The river is the point. The Bann is ninety metres wide here, tidal, and at The Cutts a mile upstream it does the thing rivers do when geology gets in the way - it leaps. The Honourable The Irish Society have held the fishing rights since the original 1613 charter and they still sell day licences from an office in town. They have outlasted three empires. They will outlast you.
Mountsandel, on a wooded bluff above the river ten minutes south of the Diamond, is where Ireland's human story actually begins. Carbon-dated to between 7,900 and 7,600 BC. Older than Newgrange by four thousand years. Older than the pyramids by five. There is no visitor centre. You walk up through the trees and stand on the spot.
Don't come for nightlife. Come for a half-day with the river, an hour with the prehistory, and a meal at the Brown Trout out the road. Then drive ten minutes to Castlerock or Portstewart for the sea. The town is a base, not a destination - and once you accept that, it works very well.
