Murlough Bay

Where it sits. Murlough Bay is a deep, wooded, north-east facing inlet on the very corner of County Antrim, folded between the dolerite wall of Fair Head to the west and the headland of Torr Head to the east. The name comes from the Irish for a sea inlet. It faces Rathlin Island across four miles of fast water, and on a clear day the view runs on to the Mull of Kintyre, Islay and the hills of Jura — Scotland reads as a neighbouring county rather than a foreign country. The geology is the standard Antrim sandwich, basalt lying over sandstone and limestone, but here the layers are exposed on a steep slope rather than in a cliff face, which is why the bay is green and shaggy where the coast either side is bare.

Getting down. The bay is reached by a signed turning off the Torr Road, then a single-track lane that drops in a series of tight, steeply cambered bends through gates to three successive parking levels. The lowest brings you to within a couple of minutes of the shore. It is not a road for caravans, coaches or nervous drivers, and in wet weather the surface is greasy under the trees. The reward is that Murlough is one of the few places on this coast where a car park does not come with a crowd; on a weekday outside July you may have the whole bay.

Layers of history. The eleventh-century preface to the Amra Coluim Cille records Murlough as the landing place of Saint Columba when he sailed back from Iona to attend the Synod of Drumceat around 595, which makes this quiet inlet one of the oldest named arrival points in Irish literature. Much later it was industrial: the coal measures of the Ballycastle field run out under this corner of the coast, and the slopes hold the remains of nineteenth-century workings and a scatter of limekilns, along with roofless cottages and the ruin of a small church. Roger Casement, executed for treason in 1916, asked in a letter written from Pentonville that his body be brought back to lie in the old churchyard at Murlough Bay; he had spent long stretches with relatives at Ballycastle and loved this stretch of coast. A memorial cross raised here in the twentieth century was destroyed during the Troubles, and only its plinth remains. A small commemoration is still held each August.

On screen. Murlough Bay is one of the quieter entries on Northern Ireland's Game of Thrones map, and it is worth being accurate about what that means. No famous exchange of dialogue happened on this shingle. What the production took from here were the wide coastal establishing shots and riding sequences that a series set on a fictional continent needs in quantity — the bay and the switchback lane above it have been used for both Iron Islands and Slaver's Bay material, which is why the official location trails list it twice under different Westerosi names. Standing on the lower road it is easy to see the attraction: no buildings in frame, no pylons, a hard horizon, and a slope that reads as somewhere much further south or much further north depending on the weather.

What you actually see today. The shore is a mix of grey shingle and rounded boulders, backed by hazel and ash scrub and a rough sheep pasture that runs up towards the crag. Choughs and ravens work the updraughts on Fair Head above; peregrines nest on the dolerite; seals haul out on the rocks below Torr in calm weather. A path runs west along the shore and then climbs steeply through the boulder field known as the Grey Man's Path onto the top of Fair Head, a demanding scramble that turns the visit into a serious half-day walk with one of the best views in Ireland at the top. East, a rougher route contours towards Torr Head. There are no facilities of any kind at the bay — no toilets, no café, no reliable mobile signal.

Getting there and timing. Ballycastle is the practical base, twenty minutes away by car; from Cushendun the Torr Road takes about the same time and is far more interesting. Late spring and early summer are the best of it: the slope is green, the sea is at its bluest against the dark rock, and daylight runs past ten in the evening. Come in a settled spell, wear boots rather than trainers if you intend to walk any distance, and carry water. Leave nothing in a parked car — this is remote ground with no passing traffic — and take the climb back out of the bay slowly in low gear.