Things to Do in County Londonderry

More about County Londonderry

Where to base yourself

Derry is the obvious base and the only place in the county with a real choice of hotels, restaurants and evening life. Stay inside or just outside the walls and you can do the city entirely on foot, with the coast forty minutes north by car or rail. If the beaches are the reason you came, Portstewart has the promenade, the ice cream and the guesthouses, and Castlerock is smaller and quieter with the temple on the cliff above it. Limavady works well as a middle base — twenty minutes from Benone, twenty from Binevenagh, and on the road to the Sperrins. For Heaney country and the southern end of the county, Magherafelt or Bellaghy make more sense than driving back to Derry each night. The whole north coast books out for the Portrush golf weeks and the Air Waves weekend in September; Derry itself is busiest around Halloween, when the city runs one of Europe’s largest street festivals.

The city beyond the walls

The ramparts are only the start of a day in Derry. The Tower Museum sits just inside Butcher Gate and splits into the story of the city and a floor on the Armada wreck of La Trinidad Valencera, salvaged from Kinnagoe Bay; its rooftop gives you the Foyle without the climb. The Guildhall is free to walk into, with a huge set of stained-glass windows and a permanent exhibition on the Plantation that is franker than most. St Columb’s Cathedral dates from 1633 and was the first cathedral built in these islands after the Reformation; the padlocks and shell from the 1689 siege are kept in the porch. Across the river, the Peace Bridge curves over to the old barracks square at Ebrington, and the Peacemakers Museum in the Bogside handles the peace process rather than the conflict itself.

The coast, the Bann and the train

The run from Derry to Coleraine is the best rail journey in Ireland — the line hugs the shore of Lough Foyle, ducks through the cliff at Downhill and comes out beside the sand, all in about forty minutes, and it costs a fraction of a tour. Above the tracks, Mussenden Temple was built in 1785 as a library on the cliff edge and has since had the cliff underneath it stabilised; the National Trust demesne around it is worth the walk from the car park. Nearby, Hezlett House is a thatched cottage from the 1690s that predates almost every other building in the county, though it opens only on limited days. Portstewart Strand is two miles of sand you can drive onto for a charge, backed by dunes; the Bann Estuary beside it is a reserve for waders and orchids. Up the river at Coleraine, Mount Sandel is the oldest known settled site in Ireland, occupied around 7000 BC — a grassy mound now, but the dates are extraordinary.

The Roe Valley and the escarpment

Roe Valley Country Park south of Limavady packs a lot into a small area: a wooded gorge, old linen greens where cloth was bleached, and the little 1896 power station that gave Limavady electricity before most of Ireland had any. It’s free, open all year, and the riverside paths are level enough for an easy hour. For a waterfall, Ness Country Park at Killaloo has the highest fall in Northern Ireland in a stretch of oak wood, on marked loops of one to three miles. Behind Dungiven, Benbradagh still carries the road built for a Cold War US Navy transmitter station, which makes for an unusually easy summit for the view it gives.

The Sperrins and Heaney country

The Sperrins are rounded, boggy and almost empty, and that emptiness is the point — the range holds some of the darkest skies in Ireland. Sawel is the highest at 678 m, a pathless slog from the Sperrin road rather than a graded walk, so pick a clear day and bring a compass. At the foot of the hills, Dungiven has the priory ruins and the carved O’Cahan tomb. South-east of there, Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy is a purpose-built centre on the site of the old police barracks, with the poet’s own recordings running through it; it charges admission and closes on some weekdays out of season. Springhill at Moneymore is a 17th-century plantation house with a costume collection and a snowdrop walk in February.

When to go

The coast is at its best from May to September, but the walled city, the Roe Valley and the Sperrins are year-round and the wind off Lough Foyle is honestly worse in August than people expect. Check the tide before driving onto any of the strands, and remember that prices here are in sterling.