Bellarena means ‘beautiful sand’ – French belle and Latin arena – and the name does the work the village can’t, because there isn’t much to the place itself: a post office, a shop, a community centre and 341 people on the A2 between Limavady and Coleraine. What there is, all around it, is the reason to come: the basalt wall of Binevenagh on one side, the Roe estuary and Lough Foyle on the other, and a little railway halt that drops you into the middle of it.
Arriving by rail
Bellarena is one of the most scenic small stops on the Derry–Belfast line, and arriving by train is the nicest way to do it – you come in across the Roe with Binevenagh filling the window. The original station opened in 1853; the current two-platform halt, on the other side of the level crossing, opened in March 2016. There’s an hourly service on weekdays to Derry~Londonderry (about 20 minutes) and on to Belfast Grand Central (around an hour and a half), with a reduced Sunday timetable.
One honest catch: the halt has no car park. A 214-space park-and-ride has been approved but isn’t built yet, so for now you either arrive on foot, get dropped off, or rely on the train at both ends. It’s unmanned, with a ticket machine and step-free ramps to both platforms.
The demesne garden
The Bellarena demesne garden, looked after by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, sits on the north bank of the River Roe a few miles north of Limavady. It’s the surviving garden of a mid-17th-century estate – William Gage, a Northamptonshire gentleman, took the lease of the land (then called Ballymargy, Baile an Mhargaidh, ‘town of the market’) from the Bishop of Derry, and the later, prettier name stuck. Inside are mature specimen trees, a walled garden with an old glasshouse, a garden house and an 18th-century folly tower. It’s free, open year-round, and quietest – at its best – on a spring weekday with the river running high.
Binevenagh above the village
The big scenery is up on the Binevenagh scarp, a Game of Thrones filming location and the heart of the AONB. The Gortmore viewpoint, with its statue of the sea-god Manannán Mac Lir, is the easy win: a paved car park, level paths, and a view that runs across the Magilligan flats to Inishowen, Lough Foyle and the Donegal coast, with Scotland on the clearest days. Higher up, Binevenagh Lake is a forest reservoir perched near the cliff-edge, used by anglers (permits locally) and picnickers, and a calmer counterpoint to the drop just beyond it.
The airfield below is home to the Ulster Gliding Club, which flies the sea breezes coming up off the scarp from April to October – you can watch the launches, or book a tandem flight to see the coast from above.
Just north-east, Benone gives you a seven-mile Blue Flag strand under the cliffs – one of the longest beaches in the North and firm enough to drive or walk for miles.
Golf coming
In July 2025 the Galgorm Collection announced a £30 million championship links course, Bellarena Golf Links, on the coast between Limavady and Coleraine – the first new championship links in Northern Ireland in over a century, due to open in 2029. Groundwork may start in 2026, but it’s still in development, so it’s one to watch rather than book.
Practical notes
The A2 coastal road links Bellarena easily to Derry and Coleraine by car. For food, pubs and supplies, Limavady (6 miles south) is the nearest proper town – the village itself doesn’t have a café or restaurant. From Magilligan, just up the coast, the Lough Foyle car ferry crosses to Greencastle in Donegal, a short hop that turns a coastal day into a two-county one.
Treat Bellarena as a base, not a destination: come in by train, walk the garden and the cliffs, watch the gliders, and run the A2 west to Benone before you leave.