Overview
Most people who turn off for Stranocum are really heading for the Dark Hedges, the tunnel of beech trees a couple of miles up the road. That’s worth knowing before you go, because there is nothing at the avenue itself – no café, no toilets, no proper car park – and Stranocum, along with nearby Armoy, is where you’ll find them. The village is a small, working farming place of just over 300 people (311 at the 2021 census) on a low hill west of the River Bush, with a shop and petrol station, a garage, an animal feed mill and a trout farm. It sits about five miles from the market town of Ballymoney and fifteen minutes’ drive from the coast at Ballycastle.
The Dark Hedges
The avenue’s roughly 90 beech trees were planted by the Stuart family in the 1770s to impress visitors arriving at their Georgian mansion, Gracehill House. Two and a half centuries on, the trees lean together into a canopy that shifts with the weather and the light, which is what draws the photographers – that, and its turn as the Kingsroad in Game of Thrones.
The road through the trees (Bregagh Road) is closed to traffic to protect the shallow roots, so access is on foot only, and it’s free and open at all hours. The trees are old and some have been lost to storms; stay on the road and don’t climb the roots. Come at first light on a weekday if you can – by mid-morning the coaches arrive and the flat midday light does the place no favours. In autumn the leaves turn amber and russet; on still winter mornings fog sometimes settles under the branches.
Village life
Away from the avenue, Stranocum gets on with its own business. Bushvalley Primary School and a small village park anchor the community, and the shop, garage and feed mill cover the day-to-day. Just outside the village, Stranocum Hall – a mid-18th-century house built by the Hutchinson family, now a private home – keeps a small heritage museum that opens to groups by appointment; two early medieval ringforts and a souterrain lie nearby.
The village had its own railway once. Stranocum station opened on 18 October 1880 on the narrow-gauge Ballycastle Railway, which ran the seventeen miles between Ballymoney and Ballycastle; it closed to goods in 1924 and shut for good on 3 July 1950. Stretches of the old line can still be picked out along the modern roads.
Practical information
- Parking and facilities – There is no car park, café or toilet at the Dark Hedges themselves; the nearest facilities are in Stranocum or Armoy. Park considerately and walk in.
- Access – The avenue is a country road: an uneven surface with a gentle slope, and it can be slippery in frost. Firm shoes help.
- Dogs – Welcome on a lead.
- Best time – Early morning or late afternoon, midweek and out of high summer, gives the quietest walk and the best light.
Getting there
Stranocum is signposted off the roads between Ballymoney and Ballycastle in north County Antrim, about five miles from Ballymoney. It has no railway station now; the nearest trains are at Ballymena, some way south, with onward buses through the area. For the Dark Hedges, follow signs for Bregagh Road and walk the last stretch. Getting there before midday on a weekday is the surest way to find somewhere to leave the car and see the trees without the crowds.