Royal Portrush for the Non-Golfer: The Causeway Day

We say this with Royal Portrush, one of the finest links in the world, in front of us: the companion gets the better view. Basalt cliffs, the ruin of Dunluce on its stack, empty chalk beaches and the Giant's Causeway all lie within twenty minutes of the first tee. No other golf town in Ireland has that much drama at its door.

The problem is that everybody knows it. Between late morning and mid afternoon the coast road carries coaches, and the famous stops fill. So this day is about sequencing rather than selection. We go early, eat on the sand, and spend the afternoon indoors with whiskey while the crowds do the reverse.

The Dunluce Links takes around four and a half hours, and visiting Americans usually add time on the range beforehand. With the drive and a drink afterwards, you have from breakfast to late afternoon, which is exactly enough for the loop below.

If your group plays the Valley Links as well, you get a second day. Use it for the Causeway itself, early, and the Mussenden Temple on the cliffs west of Castlerock. Keep the two days separate rather than cramming every sight into one.

Leave as the golfer does. Dunluce Castle is five minutes east of the course, a sixteenth century ruin on a basalt stack with the Atlantic working through a sea cave underneath it. Part of the kitchen famously fell into the sea, and when you stand in what is left you understand how.

Go at opening, before the coaches, and you will have the walls largely to yourself. Allow forty five minutes. Even if the gates are not yet open, the view from the roadside pull-in above the castle is the photograph, and it costs nothing. Check the site's own opening arrangements before you go, since they vary by season.

Fifteen minutes further east, Whitepark Bay is a long crescent of pale sand backed by chalk cliffs and grazing cattle. It is usually close to empty, because the path down from the car park is steep enough to deter day trippers. That path is the price of admission, and it is worth paying.

Walk the length of the strand and back, which takes about an hour. Then drive five minutes to Ballintoy harbour, a tiny stone harbour at the bottom of a switchback road with sea stacks offshore. It is one of the loveliest corners of the whole coast and takes ten minutes to see properly.

Double back west past the course to Portstewart Strand, fifteen minutes away. Harry's Shack is a wooden restaurant on the beach itself, with the dunes of Portstewart behind it and the Atlantic in front, and it cooks fish simply and well. It is the least formal good lunch on the north coast and the one we book first.

Reserve before you travel, especially in summer, and check current opening days directly. You can drive onto parts of the strand, which is managed by the National Trust, so ask when you book where best to park. Take a walk along the tide line afterwards while the golfer is on the back nine.

Ten minutes inland, the Old Bushmills Distillery is a working distillery rather than a visitor centre with a still in it, and it is one of the oldest licensed whiskey sites in the world. The tour takes you through the production floor, and the tasting afterwards is where the day justifies itself.

Ask what is being bottled or drawn from cask the week you visit, and whether there are distillery exclusive releases you cannot buy at home. Book the tour in advance. And arrange a designated driver for the afternoon, or base yourselves at the Bushmills Inn, which puts the distillery and the course within a few minutes of each other.

Reverse the day. Distillery in the morning, a long lunch indoors at the Bushmills Inn, and the coast late in the afternoon, when the light after Atlantic rain is the best you will get on this shore. Grippy shoes matter on the Whitepark path, which turns slick in wet weather.

We would skip the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge in high season. It means a timed ticket, a queue and a forty minute walk for a thirty second crossing. The Giant's Causeway itself is worth it, but only first thing in the morning or in the last hour of light, never in the middle of the day.

Portrush is roughly an hour from Belfast and just under an hour from the City of Derry airport. You need a car for this day, or a private driver who knows the coast. Stay at the Bushmills Inn if the distillery matters to you, or in Portrush itself if you want to walk to the first tee.

Pair this leg with Royal County Down, two hours south, for a northern trip that gives the companion both a forest day on foot and this coastal day by car. Between them they make the strongest case for Northern Ireland as a first golf trip rather than an afterthought.