Ballycastle, County Antrim

Where it sits. Ballycastle is a seaside town of about 5,600 people at the north-eastern corner of Ireland, at roughly the midpoint of the Causeway Coastal Route and inside the Antrim Coast and Glens Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It sits where the Margy River — fed by the Carey, Glenshesk and Tow rivers draining out of the Glens — reaches a wide sandy bay, with the heather dome of Knocklayde rising 514 metres inland and the dark wall of Fair Head closing the view east. Rathlin Island lies six nautical miles offshore, and the Scottish coast of Kintyre is visible from the seafront on most clear days.

The story behind it. The bay was an embarkation point long before the town: tradition holds that Fergus Mór mac Eirc sailed from here to found the kingdom of Dál Riata in Argyll. From the late fourteenth century the district was MacDonnell country, secured by the marriage of John Mór MacDonald and Margery Bisset in 1399 and consolidated in the sixteenth century by Sorley Boy MacDonnell, whose stronghold of Dunaneeny stood on the headland west of the harbour. Bonamargy Friary, founded around 1500 on the eastern edge of town, still stands roofless beside the golf course; the MacDonnell earls of Antrim are buried in its vault, Sorley Boy among them, and a holed cross in the graveyard is associated with Julia McQuillan, the "Black Nun", a seventeenth-century recluse and prophetess. Modern Ballycastle is largely the creation of Hugh Boyd, who from about 1786 built a harbour and pier and set up collieries, a glassworks, potteries, a brewery and a tannery, briefly turning the town into an industrial port.

On screen. Ballycastle is the natural base for the coastal half of Northern Ireland's Game of Thrones map, and everything within twenty minutes' drive: Ballintoy Harbour, which played Lordsport on Pyke, is five miles west; the Larrybane quarry where Renly Baratheon's camp was built sits beside the Carrick-a-Rede car park a little further on; Murlough Bay and the Fair Head cliffs, used for Iron Islands and Dragonstone material in the seventh season, are reached by the Torr Road east of town. Cushendun and its cave, where Melisandre gave birth to the shadow, is fifteen minutes south over the hill. Several of the ten oak doors carved from the Dark Hedges beeches felled by a 2016 storm — each one illustrating a season of the series — are installed in bars and hotels along this stretch of coast, including Ballintoy and Cushendun.

The Ould Lammas Fair. On the last Monday and Tuesday of August the town gives itself over to one of the oldest surviving fairs in Ireland, held here for some four centuries. Originally a horse and lamb sale, it now fills the Diamond, the Fairhill and the streets around them with several hundred stalls and something like sixty thousand visitors over two days. The two foods that go with it are dulse, a dried purple seaweed picked off the rocks and eaten like salted crisps, and yellowman, a brittle honeycomb toffee sold in broken slabs. Accommodation across the north coast tightens sharply that weekend.

What you actually see today. The town has two centres: the Diamond, uphill, with shops, banks and pubs, and the seafront half a mile below, with the Blue Flag beach, the promenade, the tennis courts and the harbour where the Rathlin ferries berth alongside a seasonal passenger service to Campbeltown and Port Ellen in Scotland. A memorial at the harbour marks the 1898 wireless experiments run between here and Rathlin by Marconi's assistants. At the far end of the strand, Pans Rocks — the remains of an old sea-salt works — jut into the water and are a favourite fishing spot, with the Devil's Churn, a cleft with steps cut into the stone, just beyond. The Corrymeela Community, founded in 1965 as a centre for reconciliation work, occupies a site on the cliff above the town.

Getting there and timing. Ballycastle is about ninety minutes from Belfast by car and forty-five from Coleraine, with Ulsterbus services from Ballymena and Coleraine; there is no railway station. The town works well as a two- or three-night base for the Causeway coast, with more choice of restaurants and pubs than anywhere else east of Portrush. Summer brings the crowds and the fair; May, June and September give the same light with a fraction of the traffic, and the coastal walks in either direction — to Fair Head or west along the cliffs — are at their best then.