Towns & Villages in County Antrim

Four entries here sit within a few miles of each other on the north coast. Ballintoy is a triangular limestone quay down a steep, coach-unfriendly road off the B15, with Whitepark Bay’s white sand a short walk east. Bushmills, three miles from the Giant’s Causeway, is a conservation village of listed stone built around a distillery working the River Bush since 1784. Ballycastle holds the north-eastern corner, with a working harbour, a Blue Flag beach, the Ould Lammas Fair in late August and the short ferry to Rathlin.

The Glens supply two more. Carnlough grew around a limestone harbour built to ship stone out of the glens; Cushendall sits where three glens meet under the flat top of Lurigethan, and works better as a base than as a stop. Belfast appears several times over, because the city is easier to take in quarters: the walkable square mile between City Hall and the river, the free Ulster Museum and Botanic Gardens of the Queen’s Quarter, and the linen warehouses of Bedford Street, which rewards a concert at Ulster Hall more than a wander.

Inland, the market towns are the quieter half. Ballymoney has a free self-guided trail linking 16 sites and sits eight miles from the Dark Hedges; Gracehill, an intact 18th-century Moravian settlement, became Northern Ireland’s first Cultural World Heritage Site in 2024. Larne and Cullybackey both come with transport attached, one the Cairnryan ferry, the other a station on the Belfast to Derry line.