The Glens of Antrim and Rathlin Island

CARNLOUGH stands at the head of Glencloy. Until the 1960s, Carnlough’s way of life was linked to its limestone quarries, and the village’s most striking feature today remains its sturdy limestone buildings, dating mainly from the mid-nineteenth century. Right in the village centre, running over the main road, there’s a solid stone bridge that once carried a railway bringing material down to the harbour, which itself has an impressive breakwater, clock tower and limestone courthouse.

CUSHENDALL, which lies at the head of three of the nine Glens, is a delightfully understated village, its charming colour-washed buildings grouped together on a spectacular shore. The red-sandstone tower at the central crossroads was built in 1817 by one Francis Turnley, an official of the East India Company, as “a place of confinement for idlers and rioters”, and, though there’s little else to see here, the village makes a fine base for exploring the local countryside and catching a traditional-music session. If at all possible, time your visit to coincide with the Heart of the Glens festival (wwww.glensfestival.com) in the middle of August, one of the area’s oldest events, replete with traditional music, sporting events and much merriment, culminating in a huge street ceilidh on the Sunday.

The lively market town and port of BALLYCASTLE sits at the mouth of the two northernmost Antrim Glens, Glenshesk and Glentaisie, and makes a pleasant base for exploring the Causeway Coast or the Glens themselves. The best time to visit Ballycastle is at the time of the Ould Lammas Fair, Ireland’s oldest fair, dating from 1606. Held on the last Monday and Tuesday in August, it features sheep and pony sales. Stallholders do a roaring trade in dulse, an edible seaweed, and yellowman, a tooth-breaking yellow toffee that’s so hard it needs a hammer to break it up.

Rathlin Island lies five miles north of Ballycastle and just twelve miles west of the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland. Shaped like a truncated figure seven, Rathlin is an impressive, craggy place, with a coastline consisting almost entirely of cliffs, and a lighthouse at each tip. As the island’s width is never more than a mile, the sea dominates the landscape and its salty winds discourage the growth of vegetation – wind turbines harness this energy source for electricity generation. The presence of dry-stone walls and numerous ruined cottages indicates a time when the population was far larger than the hundred or so current inhabitants concentrated in Church Quarter.