Craigavad is not a destination so much as a stretch of shoreline you walk through. It is a quiet, leafy townland on the County Down side of Belfast Lough, between Holywood and Bangor, the kind of place where Belfast’s Victorian merchants built big houses to look out over the water – much of the villa belt along this coast went up when the railway made commuting to the city easy. The name comes from the Irish Craig an Bháda, ‘rock of the boat’ (though one local theory reads the second word as ‘dog’, meaning the seals). If you are looking for a town centre, shops or a beach to spend the day on, this is not it; the appeal is the walk and the view.
The North Down Coastal Path
The reason to be here on foot is the North Down Coastal Path, which runs the length of the lough shore from Holywood in the west to Orlock, near Donaghadee, in the east – about 15 miles (24 km) in full, taking five and a half to six hours end to end. It passes straight through Craigavad. You do not have to do all of it: the section either side of Craigavad makes an easy, flat out-and-back with the lough on one side and gardens and golf links on the other.
Keep an eye on the water. Grey seals are regularly seen offshore here, and on a clear day you can see right across the lough to the County Antrim shore. One honest note: parts of the path follow private roads and skirt the bottom of private gardens, so it is quieter and more residential than wild – respect the local traffic and keep dogs under control.
If you are walking westward, the path links up towards Cultra and the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum; eastward it carries on past Helen’s Bay towards Crawfordsburn Country Park and Grey Point Fort, a former coastal gun battery guarding the lough.
Royal Belfast Golf Club
Craigavad’s best-known address is the Royal Belfast Golf Club on Station Road, founded in 1881 and reckoned to be the oldest golf club in Ireland. It is a parkland course running down to the shore of the lough. Worth knowing before you arrive: this is a private members’ club, not a visitor attraction, so it is for golf rather than wandering – but the clubhouse has its own history. It occupies Craigavad House, a home of the Pottinger family that stood here as far back as 1783 (Thomas Pottinger was the first sovereign, or mayor, of Belfast); the club bought the house and grounds in 1925 for £6,000.
The townland and its people
For all that it is small, Craigavad has produced and drawn in a notable cast. The barrister and Labour politician Geoffrey Bing (1909–1977) was born here, the surgeon Sir John Campbell (1862–1929) died at his house in the townland, and the novelist John Aiken Wilson (1937–1997) was born at Ballyrobert nearby. Rockport School, founded in 1906, and a Camphill community on Seahill Road are both still here.
Getting there
Craigavad sits on the A2 coast road between Holywood and Bangor, where it is joined by the B20. The old Craigavad railway station is long closed, but the Belfast–Bangor line still runs along the shore, and the nearest open stations are Cultra to the west and Seahill to the east, both a short walk away and an easy hop from Belfast. For refreshments, Holywood is the closest town, with Bangor a little further east.
For the current state of the coastal path and any closures, check the WalkNI or Discover Northern Ireland listings before you set out. Come for the seal-watching stretch between Holywood and Cultra; it is the most rewarding short walk on this part of the lough.