Fair Head

Where it sits. Fair Head — Benmore in Irish, the great cliff — is the blunt north-eastern corner of Ireland, a five-kilometre wall of rock rising some 200 metres out of the sea between Ballycastle and Murlough Bay. The crag itself is a sheer face of dolerite about 100 metres high, split into vertical columns like organ pipes. It formed roughly sixty million years ago when a sheet of molten rock was injected between horizontal Carboniferous sediments and cooled slowly enough to crack into polygons; the softer beds beneath have since been eaten away, leaving the columns standing free. From the top, Rathlin Island lies four miles north, the Mull of Kintyre about fifteen miles east, and Islay and the Paps of Jura sit on the horizon beyond.

On screen. Fair Head is Dragonstone. The cliffs were used in the seventh season of Game of Thrones, in the episodes "The Queen's Justice" and "Eastwatch", for the clifftop scenes at Daenerys Targaryen's ancestral seat after Jon Snow's arrival — the walks and negotiations along the cliff path, and the sequence in which Jon approaches Drogon on the open ground above the sea and puts a hand on the dragon's snout before leaving for the north. The castle of Dragonstone itself was a different place entirely: its dramatic causeway and stair were shot at San Juan de Gaztelugatxe in the Spanish Basque Country, and the beach where Daenerys lands was at Itzurun in Zumaia. What Northern Ireland supplied was the cliff line — a horizon with no roads, no fences and no buildings, and a drop severe enough to make the geography of a fortified island read as real.

Climbing. To climbers, Fair Head means something else altogether. It is the largest expanse of dolerite crag in Ireland and one of the great traditional climbing venues in these islands, with well over four hundred routes, most of them long, steep, strenuous crack lines that take gear and reward stamina rather than acrobatics. There is no bolted sport climbing here. An annual meet each June brings climbers from across Britain, Ireland and the continent, and the boulder field below the crag, formed of house-sized blocks fallen from the face, has become a bouldering venue in its own right. Access is by long-standing agreement with local landowners, and the descents — including the steep gully known as the Grey Man's Path, which splits the crag from top to bottom — are part of the challenge.

What you actually see today. The usual approach is a walk of a couple of miles from the car park at Coolanlough, south of Ballyvoy, across rough moorland and past three small loughs. Lough na Cranagh, the largest, holds a well-preserved oval crannóg — an artificial island revetted with stone, built in the Iron Age and used far later — sitting in black water within sight of the cliff edge. The ground is wet, tussocky and marked by boot tracks rather than a made path, and there is no barrier of any kind at the top; the edge simply arrives. Peregrines, ravens and choughs work the face, and the sea below is busy with tidal races that turn the water white on a spring tide. The Grey Man's Path takes its name from a figure of local folklore, an apparition of mist said to walk the cliff; in practical terms it is a narrow, boulder-choked cleft with a jammed block bridging it near the top, and it is a scramble rather than a path.

Below the head. The slope east of the crag drops to Murlough Bay, which can be linked with Fair Head in a single long walk if you are happy with a steep, scrambly descent through boulders. This corner of the coast also has an industrial past: the Ballycastle coalfield runs out beneath the headland, and the remains of nineteenth-century workings and limekilns lie in the woods at Murlough. On the western side, the hill drops more gently to Ballycastle, whose beach, harbour and hotels sit in full view about four miles away.

Getting there and timing. Ballycastle is the base: twenty minutes by car to the Coolanlough approach, ninety minutes from Belfast. There is no admission charge, no visitor centre, no facilities and no reliable phone coverage on the moor. Boots, a map and wind protection are the minimum; in mist the featureless plateau is genuinely disorienting, and the combination of low cloud and an unfenced 100-metre drop deserves respect. May to September gives the best conditions, with midsummer offering light until close to eleven at night, and the crag lit warm in the evening. Nesting birds mean some climbing lines are restricted in spring — check the current advice before heading for the face.