Carrickfergus; Saturday, 07 June, 2025

The standard Premier Inn breakfast and then out to explore more of the town, starting by heading over to the Carrickfergus museum, housed alongside the local council and civic centre in converted barracks in the town centre. The town has a long history and the area has been one of the most archaeologically examined on the whole island of Ireland so there are lots of finds inside the museum. Along with the archaeology the museum also focuses on the role of Carrickfergus in the final stages of the Jacobite wars on Ireland with the town being the landing point for King William III and his troops prior to the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 which would cement protestant control of the British Crown.

From the museum I had a bit of a wander around town, but the weather was deteriorating rapidly with flashes of lightning and the looks of heavy rain on its way, so I quickly grabbed some lunch and headed back to the hotel where I sat out a very wet couple of hours.

But as with anywhere in the North Atlantic archipelago islands if you give it a little bit of time the weather changes, and within 20 minutes of the last shower passing through the skies had completely cleared with bright warm sun and not a cloud in sight.

I headed back out of the hotel and over to the train station to head north up the coast to Larne, located at the top of Larne Lough on the Atlantic coast. The town’s port is on the shortest crossing point between Ulster and Scotland with ferries between Larne and Cairnryan typically taking only 2 hours. Traditionally the route had run to Stranraer, but that changed in 2011 when the route was moved further up Loch Ryan in Scotland to a better deep-water port. Today the route is split between Stena Line running to Belfast itself and P&O still running to Larne.

Because of the ferry service it means that Larne and Larne Harbour get a reasonable hourly train service, which considering how empty the trains were when I used them, is surprising. I stayed on the train all the way to the end of the line at Larne Harbour and then went for a walk around the area, starting off by heading to the ruins of Olderfleet castle at the southern end of the harbour area and having a look around them before taking the detour route (as they don’t let you just cut across an active ferry terminal) round the back of the harbour and onto the northern part of the seafront.

Here there are a number of memorials – one to a ship that was involved in gun running during the early years of the protestant paramilitaries, as well as a memorial tower to James Chaine who pushed for the establishment of the Larne to Stranraer ferry link, but the most poignant is to the MV Princess Victoria, one of the first roll-on-roll-off ferries built for British Rail to ply the route between Scotland and Northern Ireland that was caught up in a gale in January 1953 and sank, taking 135 lives with her.

From the coast I headed back in to the centre of town, had a bit of a wander and then headed down to the railway station to pick up the train part of the way back to Carrickfergus, hopping off at Whitehead where I headed down to the coast to take a walk out along the Blackhead Coastal path to the lighthouse. The path is cut into the side of the cliff, using steps, bridges and at one point a cave, to make its way around the base of the cliff before climbing up to the lighthouse on the top of the cliff before descending back down to the coast.

The full walk from the station out round the cliff up to the lighthouse and back is a little over 3 miles, but in the warm evening sun and with only a few other people around it was a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours at the end of the evening before heading back to Whitehead station and catching the train back down to Carrickfergus.

From Carrickfergus station I headed back through town, stopping off at the North and Irish gates – the former the last remaining gate of the old town walls, the latter being just the foundations and named as it was the point where you exited the Scots/British protestant town centre to enter the area outside of the walls where the predominantly catholic Irish population had been forced to live. From the walls it was a short walk down to the Sainsbury’s to grab something light for dinner and then back to the hotel for a well-deserved rest.