Game of Thrones to the Gobbins: Northern Ireland's Causeway Coast

 Northern Ireland has never had to contend with  dragons, white walkers and the chill of an endless winter. That hasn’t  stopped its wild landscape scoring a starring role in HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Driving  the 120-mile Causeway Coastal Route route from Belfast to  Derry-Londonderry is a must for fans of the show, and offers a dramatic  lesson in history and nature, from the Titanic and famine to a  relaunched cliff path and the epic Giant’s Causeway.

   The Giant's Causeway, one of the highlights of the Causeway Coast

The Titanic & the Troubles

Belfast is home to the studios where much of Game of Thrones  is shot. There's no public access, but the city's tumultuous past is  well worth exploring. From the Falls and the Shankill Rd to the  so-called ‘peace lines’, the Troubles cast a tangible shadow across the  present. For outsiders it can be baffling, but jump on a Black Taxi Tour to get an insight into the complexities behind the headlines. One of the most experienced guides is Billy Scott (touringaroundbelfast.com),  whose prodigious knowledge extends way beyond politics to reveal the  rich heritage of the city that was the industrial powerhouse behind the  construction of the Titanic. That great, doomed ship, and the city's  maritime history, are now the subject of the world-class Titanic Belfast exhibition.

   Titanic Belfast

The Gobbins Cliff Path

As the city boomed in  the early 20th century, the visionary Berkeley Deane Wise of the  Belfast & Northern Counties Railway conceived a series of innovative  attractions along the beautiful Antrim coast to encourage the newly  flush shipyard workers onto his trains. The most popular of them was the  Gob-bins Cliff Path,  which skirts the contours of Islandmagee. Years of wind, rain and rust  saw it closed in the 1950s, only to reopen in 2015 after a £7.5 million  restoration. As fat Atlantic waves lash the cliff below, guides  chaperone visitors across the suspended promenade to spy porpoises in  the Atlantic swell.

The Glens of Antrim

At Larne a small stone marker signposts the start of the Causeway Coastal Route (discovernorthernireland.com),  which cuts through County Antrim. Its completion was overshadowed by  the Great Famine in 1845, when the road became an escape route for  migrants fleeing the valleys.

Now it’s one of the most scenic  drives in the United Kingdom. Around 23,000 cubic metres of rock were  blasted out of three great lava flows to form a narrow strip of road  between sea and high cliffs, and you can see the different rock  strata in the cliff face. The nine glens – Glenarm, Glencloy, Glenariff,  Glenballyeamon, Glenaan, Glencorp, Glendun, Glenshesk and Glentaisie –  are the remnants of deep valleys scoured by glaciers 60 million years  ago.

   Grasslands stretch towards Slemish Mountain 

 It’s easy to see why the Game of Thrones location scouts chose  this wind-whipped coastline as the basis for so many scenes in the  fantasy epic. From the grasslands around Slemish Mountain, where St  Patrick spent six years as a slave, to the rocky crag of Fair Head, the  21st century seems more distant than an army of Dothraki horsemen. At Glenarm (‘Valley of the Army’) you can even kit yourself out with lion pendants or stag pins at Steensons (thesteensons.com), a family-run goldsmith that handcrafted jewellery for the series.

Views of Scotland and seabird colonies

The detour  from Glenarm to Fair Head crag along the thin ribbon of the Torr Head  road offers great views of a stretch of coast that stood in for Game of Thrones' Iron Islands and the Stormlands.

   Looking south to Cushendall from the Torr Head road

 As you continue round the headland, you'll see the Mull of Kintyre.  Scotland is so close (11 miles) that on a fair day it feels like you  might be able to swim across. In the foreground, Rathlin Island  has long acted as a stepping stone between the two countries, launching  St Columba and Christianity into the Scottish Highlands in 563 and  providing refuge for Robert the Bruce during his struggle for Scottish  Independence.Today it’s still a wild and woolly place, home to  just over 100 people and thousands of seabirds. Seals and eider ducks  laze around the harbour, which is serviced by boats from Ballycastle.  In May, orchids carpet the hills, heralding the start of breeding  season for vast colonies of raucous puffins, guillemots, fulmars and  kittiwakes. It’s a perfect place for walking, with spectacular views  back across Murlough Bay.

Here be the Giant’s Causeway

In fact, Ballycastle is a good place to ditch the car altogether in favour of hiking the Causeway Coast Way (walkni.com),  which runs all the way to Portstewart. Along the headland, the path  meanders through bright bursts of gorse, sea pink and bell heather via  the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge to  picturesque Ballintoy. This part of the route is dense with filming  locations: Renly Baratheon's army camped at Larrybane headland by the  bridge, and Ballintoy stood in for the Iron Islands harbour of Pyke.

   Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

 The path continues around the sandy sweep of fossil-rich Whitepark Bay to the Giant's Causeway. Here you reach a landscape scarred by natural forces that dwarf the terrors of Game of Thrones.  The 40,000 polygonal basalt columns, thought in folklore to be the  links in a giant’s causeway across the water to Scotland, are the  remains of fissure eruptions that spewed out waves of molten magma. This  was a seismic period in Earth’s history, when the modern Atlantic Ocean  was born and the world transformed from a place dominated by reptiles  to one in which mammals could thrive.

From the past to the present

Many travellers pull up at the Giant’s Causeway and head back to Belfast, but it’s worth pressing on into County Derry. Here you can see the romantic ruins of Dunluce Castle, eat haddock in buttermilk batter at Harry's Shack and hike out to the Downhill Demesne and the beach where CS Lewis holidayed (and where Game of Thrones’ Red  Priestess proclaimed ‘the night is dark and full of terrors’). From  here, cut inland to Binevenagh Mountain, which marks the western extent  of the Antrim Plateau. The distinctive basalt escarpment has a vertical  drop of more than 100m and dominates the landscape. It’s a magical place  at sunset, when the shadows gather on glassy Lough Foyle.

   The sea god Manannán Mac Lir at Gortmore

 At Gortmore a statue of the Celtic sea god, Manannán Mac Lir, stretches out his arms towards the setting sun and the city of  Derry - Londoderry, sitting snug behind its defensive walls. Daily tours (derrycitytours.com)  around the ramparts lay bare the ethno-political struggle that tore the  city apart for decades. At its heart are two mutually exclusive visions  of national identity and belonging. The difference now is that the  politicians pursuing those visions have resolved to do so peacefully.  The grand and bloody Game of Thrones version of Northern Ireland is just a fiction, after all.

Practicalities

The  Causeway Coastal Route runs between Belfast and Derry. Most flights to  the region go to Belfast City or Belfast International airports. To  cover the entire route (plan on 4-7 days), you should hire a car or join  a tour (touringaroundbelfast.com). The route can also be cycled, although there are challenging hills.Characterful and convenient sleeping options include Malmaison Belfast, Blackhead Lighthouse (greatlighthouses.com), Whitepark House (whiteparkhouse.com) and the newly opened Bishops Gate Hotel (bishopsgatehotelderry.com), a listed 17th-century property.