Waterfoot

Where the glen meets Red Bay

Main Street runs a short line of pubs, a chippy and a shop, and the sea is at the end of it. Waterfoot sits where the Glenariff River reaches Red Bay, at the foot of the glen that Antrim calls the Queen of the Glens, and the beach is a kilometre or so of sand backed by shallow dunes and a strip of parkland. On a clear evening you can see across the bay towards the Mull of Kintyre. The council gave the beach a Seaside Award in 2024, and it is one of the quieter stops on the Causeway Coastal Route, more used by locals for evening walks and summer picnics than by the coach traffic.

No. 9 Chippy & Café at 9 Main Street does fish and chips, onion rings, chicken goujons, southern-fried goujons and nuggets, and cooked breakfasts if you get there early enough. It has tables for eating in as well as a takeaway counter. A few doors along, the Costcutter at number 21 covers the rest: fresh food, produce, household basics, sweets and drink, with a butcher also listed at the same address.

Village pubs and Glenariffe's church

Two pubs share the street. Mariner's, at number 7, is a small traditional place next to the beach and works best as the quiet pint after a walk on the sand. The Saffron Bar, at 4–6 Main Street, is the village local; one visitor recorded the staff and regulars as very welcoming and a solo singer working the room, and the bar is licensed for indoor entertainment, so it is worth checking what's on.

The Church of St Patrick and St Brigid, up the road at Glenariffe, is worth the short detour inside. It was finished in 1917 in local sandstone quarried at Coskib, and, unusually for the date, the walls were built with a cavity. The apse carries mosaics by the Ludwig Oppenheimer workshop, including the four evangelists, and three stained-glass windows by Michael Healy show St Patrick preaching, the risen Christ at the Sea of Tiberias, and St Brigid handing out alms. Frank Rogers called them "three of the most delightful windows to be found anywhere in the Glens of Antrim." The porch holds a replica of the twelfth-century Ardclinis Crozier, the original of which is in the National Museum of Ireland. In the graveyard, four granite pillars mark the outline of an earlier church, St Killian's, dedicated in 1839 and burned by accident in 1915.

River, beach and forest walks

For walking, the Glenariff River Walk is the easy one: about three kilometres and an hour from Carnneill Park along the river to Greenaghan Cottage, with Lurigethan rising to the north and the Garron Plateau to the south; take footwear that copes with the riverbank. The Beach Walk from Main Street runs over mown grass, sand and boardwalk with views to the ruin of Red Bay Castle, past a wildflower meadow where yellow-rattle grows and small copper butterflies turn up, and two play parks, one with balance beams, a climbing net, a tunnel and a ball court. Longer legs can pick up the last section of the Moyle Way from Laragh Lodge, or drive the four miles up to Glenariff Forest Park for the waterfall and gorge trails.

Red Bay Castle and Carrivemurphy Pier

The castle itself, on a headland between here and Cushendall, is down to a single wall of its old tower house on private land, so it stays a thing you look at from the road. Sir James MacDonnell built it in 1561; Shane O'Neill burned it in 1565, Sorley Boy repaired it three years later, and Cromwellian forces finished it off in 1652. Nearer the shore, two concrete stumps are all that is left of Carrivemurphy Pier, built in 1874 for a mineral railway that carried iron ore down the glen and gave up after three years when the ore ran thin. The cormorants have it now, standing on the stumps with their wings out to dry.

The road in and summer evenings

Getting here means the A2 coast road; buses run Monday to Saturday on the 150 between Ballymena, the forest park, Waterfoot and Cushendall — check the current timetable, since there is nothing on a Sunday — and the nearest railhead is Ballymena, about 18.5 miles inland. On a summer evening the beach draws people who live here, out for a walk with the dog, and the light going long across the water towards Scotland.