Giant's Causeway Guide

Causeway Coastal Route: Complete Guide & Map

The Causeway Coastal Route is the road that ties everything on this site together — a 120-mile (190km) drive between Belfast and Derry~Londonderry, tracing the Antrim coast north through Larne and the Glens of Antrim, along the north coast past the Giant’s Causeway, and on to Derry. You don’t need to drive all of it to have a great trip — most visitors base themselves around Bushmills or Portrush and do the middle third, where almost everything on this page sits within a 20-minute drive of the Causeway itself.

This isn’t a list of every possible stop on 120 miles of coastline — it’s the real, verified stops we actually cover on this site, in a sensible order, so you can build your own day (or few days) around them.

The core stretch — Portrush to Ballycastle

If you’ve only got a day, this is the section that matters. In rough geographic order, west to east:

  1. Portrush — the natural base town. Beaches, restaurants, three hotels we cover directly, and Royal Portrush Golf Club.
  2. Whiterocks Beach — chalk cliffs and named rock formations, between Portrush and Dunluce.
  3. Magheracross Viewpoint — a two-minute stop with sweeping views, and a genuine shot at the northern lights after dark.
  4. Dunluce Castle — a clifftop ruin a few minutes from Portrush, visible from the Causeway Hotel’s own windows.
  5. Bushmills — the whiskey town, and the start point for the Giant’s Causeway & Bushmills Railway.
  6. The Giant’s Causeway itself — see our visitor centre and getting there pages for the practical detail.
  7. Dunseverick Castle & Falls — a much older, quieter ruin on the coastal path east of the Causeway.
  8. Ballintoy Harbour — a short detour off the coast road, genuinely one of the most photogenic stops on the whole route.
  9. Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge — walkable from Ballintoy along the coastal path, or a short drive.
  10. Kinbane Castle — a smaller, quieter MacDonnell ruin on a white limestone headland just before Ballycastle.
  11. Ballycastle — the Ould Lammas Fair, the Rathlin ferry, and where our Salthouse hotel and Morton’s fish and chips listings sit.
  12. Rathlin Island — a genuine half-to-full-day extension via the Ballycastle ferry, not a quick stop. Also where Marconi ran some of the world’s first commercial wireless experiments in 1898.

Beyond Ballycastle, if you’re not turning back yet

Three stops further east along Fair Head, genuinely worth it if you’re not rushing back:

  • Fair Head — a 3-mile, 200-metre cliff with an Iron Age crannog on its summit.
  • Murlough Bay — remote, quiet, and tied to Roger Casement’s unfulfilled dying wish.
  • Loughareema, the Vanishing Lake — a lake that genuinely drains and refills itself within hours, on the road toward Cushendall.

Worth the detour inland

The Dark Hedges sits a short drive inland from the coast road, between Ballymoney and Ballycastle — free to visit, best early in the morning.

Further along, if you’re doing the whole route

Stops genuinely further afield, worth knowing about if you’re covering more than the core stretch rather than a single day at the Causeway:

  • Portstewart — a Victorian seaside town just west of Portrush, with Morelli’s ice cream and a 2-mile National Trust strand.
  • Castlerock — a quieter village further west, and the base for both Mussenden Temple and Hezlett House.
  • Mussenden Temple & Downhill — the Earl Bishop’s clifftop rotunda, near Castlerock.
  • Hezlett House — a genuinely remarkable 1691 thatched cottage, also near Castlerock.
  • The Gobbins Cliff Path — at the opposite end, near Islandmagee and Larne, closer to Belfast than to the Causeway. A separate day out, not a stop on the way.

How long do you actually need

A single day covers the core Portrush-to-Ballycastle stretch comfortably, with time for the Causeway itself plus two or three other stops — Dunluce and Ballintoy, say, or Carrick-a-Rede and Bushmills. Doing the Dark Hedges, Rathlin, Fair Head, or the full run out to Mussenden Temple, Castlerock, or the Gobbins realistically needs two to three days, not because the driving takes that long, but because each of those genuinely deserves unhurried time rather than a drive-by.

If you’re deciding whether the Causeway itself is worth building a trip around in the first place, we’ve written an honest take on that too.