Estimated reading time: 13 mins
Look, I’ve driven a lot of coastal roads and most of them oversell themselves. This one doesn’t. You leave Belfast, and within an hour you’re on a road that’s basically been carved into the bottom of a cliff, with the sea slapping about six feet to your left and the Scottish coast sitting on the horizon like it’s showing off.
The whole run from Belfast to Derry is only about 130 miles. You could do it in a long afternoon if you hated yourself. Don’t. Four days is the number I’d give anyone asking, because the good bits here are small and scattered: a harbour with three boats in it, a rope bridge that shouldn’t legally exist, a ruined castle sat on a rock that had its kitchen fall into the sea. Rush it and you’ll drive past all of them.
What I like most is the variety. Day one is glens and fishing villages. Day two is the big-ticket stuff, the Causeway and the rope bridge and a distillery that’s been going for centuries. Day three you barely drive at all. Day four you finish on a clifftop temple that looks out over about forty miles of Atlantic, and then roll into Derry with its walls still fully intact, which is rarer than people realise.
You need your own car. There are buses along parts of the coast and you can compare trains and coaches into Belfast easily enough, but public transport skips the empty stretches, and the empty stretches are the point. I’d book your hire car well ahead of time, because Northern Ireland’s rental fleet is small and summer prices climb fast. If you’re still weighing up where to go across the region, my Europe travel guides have plenty more routes worth stealing.
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Causeway Coastal Route Road Trip: Quick Facts at a Glance
Start: Belfast
End: Derry / Londonderry
Best length: 4 days (5 if you want a proper day in Belfast first)
Total distance: Around 130 miles (210 km) with the detours in
Best for: First-time road trippers, coastal walkers, whiskey drinkers, anyone with a camera
Driving difficulty: Easy. Left-hand drive, short distances, two or three narrow coastal lanes
Best time to go: Late spring and early autumn. Long light, fewer coaches, softer crowds
Car needed: Yes, and a small one is better than a big one on the Torr Head lanes
Main route stops: Belfast → Carrickfergus → Glenarm → Carnlough → Cushendun → Torr Head → Ballycastle → Carrick-a-Rede → Ballintoy → Giant's Causeway → Bushmills → Dunluce → Portrush → Downhill → Derry
Tinker's Tip: Northern Ireland has a small rental fleet and it empties out in summer, so compare Belfast car hire prices as soon as your flights are locked in. Pick up in Belfast, drop off in Derry, and check the one-way fee before you click, because it varies a lot between suppliers.
The Route: What to Expect
The shape is simple. You hug the Antrim coast north out of Belfast, turn left at the top corner of the island, then run west along the Causeway coast into Derry. No backtracking, no daft loops, and the road does almost all the work for you.
The character shifts as you go, which is what stops it feeling samey. The first stretch is glens and stone harbours and villages with one shop. The middle is the famous stuff, and yes it gets busy, but there are ways round that (mostly involving getting up earlier than you want to). The last day is wide open beaches and clifftops with barely anyone on them, and then a walled city to finish in.
Two of the days are properly short on driving. Day three you might do fifteen miles all in. That’s deliberate. This route rewards standing still.
| Day | Route | Drive time | Vibe |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Belfast → Carrickfergus → Glenarm → Carnlough → Cushendun → Ballycastle | ~2 hrs 30 | Glens, harbours, sea on your elbow |
| 2 | Ballycastle → Carrick-a-Rede → Ballintoy → Giant's Causeway → Bushmills → Portrush | ~1 hr | The big hitters, back to back |
| 3 | Portrush, Dunluce Castle, Dark Hedges, Portstewart Strand | ~45 mins total | Beach town, ruins, slow day |
| 4 | Portrush → Downhill Demesne → Binevenagh → Derry | ~1 hr 15 | Clifftop temple, big views, walled city |
Causeway Coastal Route Road Trip Itinerary
Day 1: Belfast to Ballycastle via the Glens of Antrim
Driving: Around 75 miles (120 km) with the Torr Head detour, roughly 2 hrs 30 behind the wheel. Give the whole day to it.
Get out of Belfast by nine if you can, because this is the day with the most stopping. The coast road proper begins past Larne, and it’s the bit engineers blasted straight through the cliffs back in the 1830s, which is why you spend a good half hour driving with rock on one side and water on the other. Glenarm and Carnlough come first, both tiny, both worth a walk round the harbour. Then Cushendun, where the cave from a certain televised shadow-baby scene sits five minutes from the car park, and finally the Torr Head lane, which is single track, steep, and absolutely the best fifteen minutes of the day. Finish in Ballycastle with fish and chips and legs that have been out of the car more than in it.
Things to do:
- Carrickfergus Castle, 12 miles from Belfast (20 mins), spend about 45 minutes
- Glenarm village and walled garden, 25 miles on (35 mins), 30 to 40 minutes
- Carnlough harbour and the wee stone bridge, 4 miles further (10 mins), 20 minutes and a coffee
- Cushendun caves and the village green, 17 miles on (30 mins), give it an hour
- Torr Head scenic road, a 12 mile loop (35 mins, slow), stop twice for the Scotland view
- Ballycastle seafront, 10 miles to finish (20 mins), evening walk and dinner
Park smart: The Torr Head road has about three passing places that double as viewpoints, and that's your lot. If a tractor comes the other way, one of you is reversing. Pull in early, take the photo, and let anyone behind you go past rather than crawling along with a queue building.
Where to Stay in Ballycastle
Day 2: Ballycastle to Portrush via Carrick-a-Rede and the Giant's Causeway
Driving: Only about 25 miles (40 km), roughly an hour in total. The driving is nothing. The stopping is everything.
This is the day people come for, and it’s also the day the coach tours arrive, so timing matters more than usual. Carrick-a-Rede first thing, because the rope bridge runs on timed tickets and the early slots are calmer and the light is better. From there it’s ten minutes to Ballintoy harbour, which is small and scruffy and one of my favourite spots on the whole coast. Then the Causeway itself, and honestly, the stones are stranger in person than any photo suggests, all those hexagons packed together like someone tiled the sea floor and gave up halfway. Finish with a Bushmills tour and roll into Portrush for the night.
Things to do:
- Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, 7 miles from Ballycastle (12 mins), allow 90 minutes including the clifftop walk
- Ballintoy harbour, 2 miles on (5 mins), 30 minutes and a poke round the rocks
- Giant’s Causeway, 6 miles further (12 mins), give it 2 to 3 hours minimum
- Walk the red trail down and the cliff path back, about an hour on foot
- Old Bushmills Distillery, 2 miles on (5 mins), tours run about an hour
- Portrush for the night, 6 miles (12 mins), sunset from the West Strand
Beat the coaches: Day trip buses from Belfast tend to land at the Causeway between eleven and three. Go first thing or late afternoon and you'll have whole sections of the stones to yourself. Same trick works at the rope bridge, where the first ticket slot of the day is the one to grab.
Worth the ticket: The rope bridge sells out on decent-weather days, so book ahead. If you'd rather someone else handle the driving and the parking scrum, there are guided Causeway and rope bridge trips that cover the same stretch, plus a few small group day tours along the Antrim coast if you want the stories that go with the stones.
Recommended read: 3 Days In Belfast: Titanic and Giants
Where to Stay in Portrush
Day 3: Portrush, Dunluce Castle and the slow day
Driving: Barely 15 miles (25 km) all in, maybe 45 minutes of driving spread across the day. Add 40 miles if you go for the Dark Hedges.
Every road trip needs a day where you stop moving, and this is it. Portrush is a proper seaside town, slightly faded in the good way, with two enormous beaches and a golf links that hosts the Open every so often. Dunluce Castle is three miles east and it’s the one I’d send anyone to over the Causeway if I had to pick, honestly. It sits on a headland with a sea cave running underneath it, and the kitchens genuinely collapsed into the water one night during a storm. Spend the afternoon on Portstewart Strand, where you can drive your car onto the sand, which never stops being mildly ridiculous.
Things to do:
- Dunluce Castle, 3 miles from Portrush (7 mins), allow an hour with the cliff path
- Portrush West Strand and the harbour, on foot, half a morning easily
- Portstewart Strand, 5 miles west (12 mins), 2 hours and a walk to the dunes
- The Dark Hedges, 20 miles inland (35 mins), 30 minutes and only if trees excite you
- Whiterocks Beach for the limestone arches, 2 miles east (5 mins), an hour
- Evening pint in Portrush with the sun going down behind Inishowen
Honest opinion: The Dark Hedges is a 40 mile round trip to look at a line of beech trees with cars parked all along it. If you love the show it's from, fine, go. If you don't, spend that time on Portstewart Strand instead and thank me later.
Recommended reads: All Guides to Ireland
Day 4: Portrush to Derry via Downhill Demesne and Binevenagh
Driving: Around 40 miles (65 km), about 1 hr 15 with the Binevenagh climb. An easy finish.
The last stretch is quietly the most dramatic bit of the whole route and hardly anyone tells you that. You follow the coast west out of Portstewart, and after Castlerock the road runs right along the shore with the train line beside it. Downhill Demesne comes next, and Mussenden Temple is the money shot: a little round stone temple perched on the very edge of a cliff, 120 feet above a beach that goes on for miles. Then climb Binevenagh for the view back over Lough Foyle before dropping down into Derry, where you can walk the full circuit of the city walls in about an hour, which is genuinely the best introduction to the place.
Things to do:
- Downhill Demesne and Mussenden Temple, 12 miles from Portrush (25 mins), allow 90 minutes
- Downhill Beach below the cliffs, 5 minutes on foot from the car park, half an hour
- Gortmore viewpoint and Binevenagh, 8 miles on (20 mins), 30 minutes at the top
- Derry city walls, 20 miles to finish (35 mins), walk the full mile-long circuit
- The Bogside murals and the Peace Bridge, on foot, an hour or two
- Guildhall and a last dinner in the walled city
Weather note: Mussenden Temple sits on an exposed cliff edge and the wind up there is no joke, even on a calm day down at sea level. Hold onto hats, phones and small children. The path can get slick after rain too, so shoes with a bit of grip make the walk much less exciting.
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Where To Stay For This Northern Ireland Road Trip
Three bases cover the whole route without any silly backtracking. You want to be walking distance from dinner every night, because after a day of cliff paths nobody fancies getting back in the car. Book early for summer, since the north coast has a limited number of beds and the Open golf years turn Portrush into a scramble.
Belfast (before you set off): The Cathedral Quarter is the pick if you want bars and music on your doorstep, and the Titanic Quarter suits anyone with an early start or a hire car to collect. City centre works fine too, and everything is walkable from it.
Ballycastle (night 1): Stay near the seafront or the diamond in the middle of town. It’s small, friendly, and puts you fifteen minutes from the rope bridge for that early start. Cushendall or Cushendun are prettier alternatives if you’d rather be even quieter.
Portrush (nights 2 and 3): This is the natural two-night base. Aim for somewhere between the harbour and the West Strand so you can walk to dinner. Portstewart, four miles along, is a bit more genteel and slightly cheaper, and it works just as well.
Derry (final night): Inside or right beside the walls. The area around Waterloo Street and the Guildhall puts you in the middle of the pubs and the live music, and you can walk the whole walled city from there in a morning.
Pit Stops & Side Detours
The main route already links up neatly, so treat these as optional extras rather than must-dos. A couple of them are worth rearranging a day for. One of them is on here purely so you know to leave it alone.
- Rathlin Island, a 45 minute ferry from Ballycastle. Puffins in early summer, an upside-down lighthouse, and about 150 residents. Needs the better part of a day, so only if you’ve got a fifth one going spare
- Glenariff Forest Park, a short hop inland from Waterfoot. Waterfall walks through a proper wooded gorge, and a good rain plan when the coast is being miserable
- The Gobbins cliff path near Islandmagee, a guided walk on bridges bolted to the cliff face. Books out fast and needs a couple of hours, but it’s a proper thrill
- Kinbane Castle, a ruin on a chalk headland between Ballycastle and the rope bridge. Steep steps down, hardly anyone there, and a view most people drive straight past
- Magilligan Point, at the mouth of Lough Foyle. Huge empty beach and a tiny ferry over to Greencastle if you fancy adding a slice of Donegal
- Skip: the Giant’s Causeway visitor centre gift shop scrum in the middle of the day. Park in the village, walk down, and put the money towards lunch instead
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Browse the shopLocal Eats Worth Chasing
Northern Irish food has got seriously good in the last decade, and the coast is where a lot of it landed. Portions are generous, seafood is local, and nobody will look at you oddly for having a pint at lunch. A few things I’d go out of my way for.
- An Ulster fry, once, properly. Soda farl and potato bread are the bits that make it different from an English breakfast, and they’re the best bits
- Dulse from Ballycastle, dried seaweed sold in bags at the market. Salty, chewy, deeply strange, and a local obsession. Try it before you judge it
- Yellowman, honeycomb toffee that will pull your fillings out. Traditionally eaten with dulse, which sounds mad and somehow works
- Fresh crab and chowder in Portrush, ideally eaten looking at the harbour. The seafood restaurants along the front are consistently strong
- Bushmills whiskey at the source, including the bottlings you can only buy at the distillery. Nominate a driver first, obviously
- A bap from a Derry chippy, and if you’ve never had a fish supper on the walls at dusk, you’re missing a small perfect thing
Road Trip Playlist
Podcasts to Queue Up
The driving days here are short, so you don’t need hours of listening. What you do need is something for the inland stretches and the run into Derry, where the road stops being a distraction in itself.
- Anything covering Irish history from the plantations onwards, which makes Derry’s walls land very differently when you get there
- A Troubles documentary series before day four, so the murals and the Bogside make sense rather than just being photographs
- A folklore or myths show for the Causeway leg, since the giant Finn McCool story is genuinely better told out loud
- Something light and daft for the Torr Head lanes, because you’ll be stopping every five minutes anyway
- A local music playlist for the Portrush evenings, ideally with some fiddle in it
Quick win: Download the playlist. Use zero data, and you dont need to worry about signal!
Road Trip Essentials
None of this is complicated, but a few of these I learned the irritating way. Get them sorted before you set off and the whole trip runs smoother.
A small hire car, booked early. Northern Ireland’s rental supply is genuinely limited and prices climb hard in summer. I’d lock in your car hire from Belfast as soon as you know your dates. Go smaller than you think you need. The Torr Head lane and half the village car parks will thank you for it.
Check the one-way drop fee. Picking up in Belfast and dropping in Derry is the whole point of this route, but some suppliers charge a chunk for it and others barely anything. Compare that line specifically rather than just the headline price.
Data that actually works on the coast. Signal drops in the glens and along Torr Head, which is exactly where you don’t want your maps giving up. I run a backup UK eSIM from Airalo so I’m never relying on one network.
Download offline maps the night before. Free, takes two minutes, saves you a proper headache on the single track sections where there’s nowhere to stop and faff about.
Cover for the things that go sideways. Scraped alloy on a stone wall, phone dropped off a cliff path, a stomach that disagreed with the dulse. I’d sort travel insurance before you travel rather than hoping for the best.
Layers, always. The coast can give you four seasons before lunch. Waterproof, fleece, decent shoes with grip for the clifftop paths. There’s more of what I actually pack in my travel planning resources, and plenty of general advice over in my travel tips section.
Getting to and from the start. If you’d rather not collect a car straight off a flight, pre-book an airport transfer into Belfast and pick the car up in town the next morning. For a first day in the city itself, a hop-on hop-off Belfast bus tour covers the Titanic Quarter and the murals without any parking stress. More route ideas live in my travel inspiration hub and the wider destination guides.
Stay connected: Coverage along the Antrim coast is patchy in the glens and around Torr Head, so a second data option is a sensible bit of insurance. A Holafly eSIM installs in a couple of minutes, and the code THETRAVELTINKER gets you 5% off any eSIM or 10% off Holafly plans for the first 12 months.
Good to know: Flight delayed or cancelled on the way over? You may well be owed money, and most people never bother claiming. It takes minutes to check a flight compensation claim rather than shrugging and swallowing the cost.
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Nick Harvey
Hi, I am Nick! Thank you for reading! The Travel Tinker is a resource designed to help you navigate the beauty of travel! Tinkering your plans as you browse!
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