This is the back way to the Giant’s Causeway. From the car park at Portballintrae you cross a footbridge onto the sand and pick up the old tramway line, which runs two miles east through the dunes to the Causeway itself; you arrive on foot from the quiet end, without paying for the visitor car park. The beach is 1.2 km of pale sand, and it answers to three names: Runkerry Strand, Blackrock Strand, and on the council’s books Runkerry Beach. Locally it is Bushfoot.
What it is not is a swimming beach. Bushfoot is rated one of the best surf breaks in the UK, with Atlantic swells running from a summer 2ft to a winter 12ft, and the same open fetch and shelving, rip-torn seabed that build the waves make the water dangerous. The council’s wording is blunt: bathing is inadvisable, there is no lifeguard, and the nearest patrolled beach is Whiterocks, three and a half miles back toward Portrush. Surf if you know what you are doing; otherwise stay on the sand.
The Girona
The most famous thing to happen here happened underwater. The Girona, a galleass of the Spanish Armada, was lost on this coast, and in 1967 and 1968 a team of Belgian divers led by Robert Sténuit, the world’s first aquanaut, found the wreck off Portballintrae and raised the largest haul of Armada treasure recovered up to that time. The gold, jewellery and coins are now in the Ulster Museum in Belfast; above Salmon Rocks at the beach car park, a memorial marks the ship’s last voyage.
Walking, the railway and dolphins
The standard outing is a loop: out along the tramway through the dunes and back along the strand, with the option of carrying on to the Causeway or turning inland through Bushfoot golf course to the car park. At the mouth of the River Bush a reef of rock pools opens up at low tide, good for an hour with children. Watch the water, too: common dolphins come in close here, and people have seen them surfing the breakers.
Through the dunes runs the Giant’s Causeway and Bushmills Railway, a three-foot narrow-gauge heritage line that crosses the River Bush and covers the two miles between Bushmills and the Causeway in about fifteen minutes. The present railway opened in 2002, but it follows the bed of the original Giant’s Causeway Tramway of 1883, hailed at its opening as the first long electric tramway in the world. Check the railway’s own site for running days before you count on a ride.
Above the far end of the beach stands Runkerry House, a sandstone pile built in the 1860s for Sir Edward Macnaghten, Baron Macnaghten, whose family still own much of Portballintrae. It is private apartments now, not open to visitors, but it makes a landmark on the walk.
Getting there and practicalities
Bushfoot sits just off the A2 near Bushmills; Portballintrae is two miles west of the Giant’s Causeway and four miles east of Portrush. Park free in the village car park, which has the toilets, a shop and disabled bays; from there the footpath crosses the ‘Threequarter’ footbridge to the beach. There are no facilities on the sand itself, so bring what you need. Dogs are allowed, with restrictions from 1 June to 15 September.
With more time, the Giant’s Causeway is the obvious next stop, and you can walk to it; the Old Bushmills Distillery is a couple of miles inland, and the ruins of Dunluce Castle sit on the cliffs a short drive west. Come at low tide on a clear morning for the rock pools and the long light down the strand.