Carnlough

A harbour built from limestone

The stone steps into Carnlough harbour are where Arya Stark hauled herself out of the water after the Waif stabbed her; the harbour stood in for the Braavos Canal in the sixth series of Game of Thrones. On any ordinary morning the steps lead down to pleasure craft and a few small fishing boats, and the limestone quay they belong to was finished in 1853 by a builder called Patrick Mahon, cut deep enough to take ships of up to three hundred tons. A mineral railway followed in 1854, carrying quarried limestone down to the sea. It is long gone, but its bridges still stride across the streets, and its bed forms part of the Cranny Falls/Gortin Quarry walk.

The village sits at the north end of Carnlough Bay, at the foot of Glencloy, the second of the Nine Glens of Antrim. The A2 Coast Road runs straight through it. Behind the shore the quarry slopes and the glen climb sharply; in front lies 1.5 km of sand and pebbles, with the harbour tucked into one corner.

Coaching inns and village bars

A prominent building on the front is the Harbourview Hotel, until recently the Londonderry Arms. It was built in 1848 as a coaching inn by Frances Anne Vane Tempest, Marchioness of Londonderry, whose estate more or less made the modern village, and it was inherited in 1921 by her great-grandson, Winston Churchill. It reopened in 2025 as a four-star whiskey hotel with a firelit Wee Bar and whiskey flights. The Coach House kitchen leans hard on the sea: Sardini oysters, Ardbeg whiskey king-prawn dippers, a Portavogie langoustine roll, mussels in white-wine cream with wheaten bread, Portavogie scampi, battered fish and chips, and Outwalker Irish coffee cheesecake to finish.

The Glencloy Inn opened in 1857 as Pat Hamill's Hotel, which once watered horses and cyclists and kept an ornamental drinking trough; the Diamond family has run it since 1983, and it turns up by name in the ballad "Sweet Carnlough Bay". McAuley's, the Bridge Inn, has been in business since 1912 behind an Art Nouveau front, and pours a well-regarded pint of Guinness. For something plainer, the Waterfall Bar is a back-street local with open fires and a pool room.

Coffee, fish and the railway path

Twilight Coffee sits opposite the harbour, pouring Bailies coffee and cooking beyond what a coffee shop needs to: eggs Benedict with pork belly on homemade brioche, a Thai red-curry hotpot of breadcrumbed haddock, mussels and new potatoes. Dogs are welcome inside and out. When you want the harbour dinner in its proper form, the Galley does fish and chips a few steps from the water.

The Cranny Falls walk starts at steps beside the old Harbour Lights premises, crosses one of the railway bridges, and follows the 1854 track bed for three miles there and back, past limestone grassland, hazel woods where red squirrels live, and a viewing platform over the falls. Keep dogs on leads; sheep graze the slopes.

Light through St John's

The Church of St John the Evangelist, built in 1996–97, is worth stepping into: a polygonal sandstone building lit by Lua Breen's stained glass, with seating in concentric circles beneath an African-mahogany ceiling and older Crucifixion windows preserved in a side chapel.

Arrivals and the tide

Larne Town station, the practical railhead, is fourteen miles south, with the 162 bus calling at the harbour on selected Monday-to-Saturday journeys, so check times before you travel. From the seawall, when the tide is right, the converted lifeboat Curiosity slips out past the piers to look for seals.