West of Portrush, Portstewart has kept more of its genuine Victorian seaside character than almost anywhere else on this coast — a proper promenade town, popular since the 1800s and still genuinely loved rather than just visited.
The castle on the headland
The striking building on Portstewart’s headland started life as Rock Castle, built by Henry O’Hara in 1834 and extended in 1844 — hence the older local name, O’Hara’s Castle. It later passed to the Crombie family before being sold to the Dominican Sisters in 1917, who founded Dominican College on the site — still a school today, and still the building that defines the Portstewart skyline.
Morelli’s
No trip to Portstewart is complete without Morelli’s — an ice cream parlour that’s been serving the town since 1911, and a genuine local institution rather than a tourist gimmick. (Worth knowing if you assumed, reasonably enough, that the castle’s O’Hara name might be connected to the ice cream — it isn’t; that’s just a coincidence of two different O’Hara-adjacent names in one small town.)
Portstewart Strand
A 2-mile stretch of sand west of the town, Portstewart Strand is owned and managed by the National Trust and designated an Area of Special Scientific Interest. Game of Thrones fans will recognise it as the location for the Dornish guards’ fight scene with Jaime Lannister and Bronn in Season 5 — a genuinely different landscape to the basalt coast further east, all dune and open sand.
Where to stay and eat
We already cover Portstewart directly elsewhere on this site: Me & Mrs Jones is a genuine Portstewart boutique guesthouse with an award-winning restaurant, a great base for exploring this end of the coast.
Getting there: Portstewart sits a short drive or bus ride from Portrush, on the same stretch of coast — easy to combine both into one day, or use either as your base.