Ballycastle is a nice coastal city located at the north of Northern Ireland. This time our tour plan was to do a coastal walk form Ballycastle to Bushmills. Most of the people explore the coastal area by driving car. Since we do not have a valid license, walking was the best option for us. Ballycastle has a nice beach where the small river Glenshesk meets together. We’ve spent the afternoon by exploring the beach and the river.
We’ve reached at Ballycastle at 4:00pm (although we left Dublin at 9:30am at morning). We had more than 2 hours delay in Ballymena (another transit town) as there were no bus running from 11:30am to 2:45pm. The waiting time in Ballymena was terribly boring. I was feeling like as if we were in a ghost city. No one was there at the bus terminal. Even when the bus started from there it was only 8-10 people had taken the one hour bus ride. I guess that is the reason for having not frequent bus running between the two towns.
We have booked our hotel before coming Ballycastle. It was not a very luxurious hotel, only a simple B&B hotel Ammiroy house. It was very near from the sea beach, as well as beside the bus stoppage. After doing a quick checkin we’ve headed for the beach as the day is not very long during autumn. The octogenarian lady owner of the guest house was really nice.
The beach is a very quiet and exactly beside the town (or you can say the town has established there). The ferry for Rathlin Island starts near from the beach area. Rathlin Island is famous for Robert Bruce. He was hiding in a cave there after defeated by the English. And then he saw the legendary spider that was struggling to climb many times but finally succeeded. He was inspired by that and later fought for Scottish independence. We had a plan to visit that island on the same day. But we couldn’t do it as we’ve lost our precious 2 hours on our way.
We were very lucky that the high tide was around when we were walking around the beach. From my own opinion, a beach is most beautiful during the high tide. There were plenty of seating spaces for the visitors. Anyone can pass an afternoon there lazily. We’ve noticed a small river was falling into the ocean (later came to know it is actually river Glenshesk). Had a walk around the river bank as the river bank was taken by the color of autumn.
It was a very shallow river, the water of the river was brownish (not sure why). Plenty of mallards were swimming in the water. Few guys were doing fishing by standing in water. There were a mini park beside the river with plenty of information. We’ve found information about few unknown places from there (i.e. Portcoon cave).
You can see the Cliff of Fair Head from the beach on a clear day. Our case it was drizzling, and also a bad light. We could only able to see the hazy shape. It was raining after the sunset. I was sitting under my umbrella and watching towards the beach for a while before saying a goodnight to the ocean.
How to Go:
If anyone is using public transport like us, then it is for them. You have to take the train from Belfast (we took it from Victoria street). The train goes till Portrush (another busy town) through Ballymena and Coleraine. You can leave the train at any stoppages if you want. From Ballymena the bus 217 goes to Ballycastle. But if you are there between 11:30am to 2:45pm then there would be no bus for you. So keep this in mind. From Ballymena it is around 50-60 minutes of bus ride. If you leave train at Colerain or Portrush then you can take the bus 402. It will drop you at the last stoppage that is Ballycastle. I don’t know how long it would take as I didn’t use it. But this bus is specially for the tourists. People call it Tourists rambler.
Where to stay:
Although most of the tourists use to visit Bushmills compare to Ballycastle, but you’d find plenty of hotels there for night staying. You can find the list of hotels from this link.
Where to eat:
There are plenty of restaurants at Ballycastle to eat. For our case we have a tongue that likes the Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani foods. We found the Kebab King, an Indian takeaway restaurant there. We had the Biriyani there with Lamb Seesh Kebab.
If you want you may like to read the next article about the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge.
Ballycastle Sea Beach,
City: Ballycastle,
County: Antrim,
Country: Northern Ireland
GPS Coordinate (55°12’18.1″N, 6°14’18.5″W)
List of Hotels near Ballycastle.
This article has written by Lonely Traveler,
for the blog http://icwow.blogspot.com/
Saturday, 28 October 2017
