A note from Deborah. Read her editorial perspective
Royal County Down is the round most American golfers plan for years and then arrive at without a real plan for the days around it. That is the problem this piece is trying to solve. The round itself needs no help from us. The Championship Course over the sea at Newcastle, with the Mourne Mountains sitting behind the ninth green, is the golf part of the trip and it will be the round you talk about at home. What we can help with is the shape of the three days that hold the round in place. Where to sleep on the arrival night, which dinner is the correct dinner in Newcastle, how to build the morning of the round so you are neither rushed nor pacing the clubhouse for two hours, what to do with the afternoon after eighteen holes, and whether to end the trip in Belfast or drive back to Dublin. We have run this exact three day trip many times with visiting friends, and here is the sequence we would book if we were building it ourselves next month.
How The Three Days Sit
The three day trip around Royal County Down is longer than it needs to be if the only goal is the round, and shorter than it should be if the goal is to see the corner of Ireland the round sits in. That is why three days is the right shape. Two days will get you the round and a dinner. Four days will drift, because the Mourne coast is a small landscape and you can walk it, drive it, and eat it in less time than the Ring of Kerry. Three days is the length that lets you arrive properly, play the round on a rested morning, spend an unhurried afternoon on the Mourne coast, and leave the next day for either Belfast or Dublin without the last morning feeling wasted.
The base for all three days is Slieve Donard Resort, the red brick Victorian hotel that sits between the clubhouse and the sea. You could stay elsewhere, and we have written about the alternatives in our Slieve Donard piece, but the three day trip works best when the hotel and the first tee are a five minute walk apart. It removes the drive on the morning of the round, which is the piece of the day American groups most often get wrong. The rest of this piece assumes you are sleeping at Slieve Donard for two nights, playing Royal County Down on the middle day, and leaving on the morning of the third.
The Quiet Arrival Into Newcastle
The first decision of the trip is the arrival, and the American instinct is to fly into Dublin, spend a night in the city, and drive up to Newcastle in the morning. We would not do that. The correct arrival is to fly into Dublin, collect the car, drive straight to Newcastle in about two hours, and give yourself the whole first evening in the town. Dublin is a trip of its own and it will not be seen well from a one night stopover with a car parked at a hotel. Fold Dublin into the return leg, or into a separate trip. Give the arrival day to the golf coast.
Once you are at Slieve Donard, the shape of the arrival evening is straightforward. Check in, walk the ten minutes into Newcastle town along the promenade, and look at the Championship Course from the beach side so that you see what you are playing before you play it. That is worth doing. It settles the nerves for the morning and it changes the way you stand on the first tee. Come back to the hotel, sit in the Percy French bar for a pint before dinner, and then walk out into the town for dinner rather than eating in the hotel dining room. The Percy French is where you drink. It is not where you eat on the arrival night. That distinction matters.
A Pint At Percy French, A Table At Brunel's
The Percy French sits in a small standalone building on the Slieve Donard grounds, a stone room with a low bar and a fire in the winter months, and it is the pub the hotel guests actually drink in. On any night of the year you will find a mix of golfers in the corner and locals in for a pint from the town, and the atmosphere is closer to a proper Down pub than to a hotel bar. Order a pint of Guinness, take it to a table near the window, and use the half hour before dinner to read the room. This is the pre-dinner drink of the trip. It is also the round after the celebration dinner on night two, and we come back to that below.
For dinner on the arrival night, the room to book is Brunel's on Bryansford Road, a five minute walk from the hotel, and one of the two or three restaurants in the north of Ireland where the kitchen is genuinely trying. Paul Cunningham cooks a short seasonal menu of Mourne lamb, Irish Sea seafood, and Down produce, and the dining room is a small first floor space above the bar. Book it the week you book the round, ask for a table around eight, and eat the tasting menu if the group is up for it. It is the correct arrival dinner because it does two things at once. It resets the trip after the flight and the drive, and it tells you what the food story of Down actually is before you have made your other decisions about where to eat.
The Morning The Mournes Are Watching
The round at Royal County Down is the reason for the trip, and the mistake most American groups make on the morning of it is to be at the clubhouse too early and too caffeinated. The tee time will be somewhere between nine and eleven for a visitor, the clubhouse opens at seven, and there is nothing to do between those hours except pace the pro shop and buy things you do not need. The correct morning is a slow breakfast in the Slieve Donard dining room, a walk on the beach before the round to look at the Mourne Mountains from the sand, and a check in at the clubhouse thirty minutes before the tee, not ninety.
The Championship Course is a walk, and it will take five hours with a caddy on a group of four. Take a caddy. It is not optional at Royal County Down for a visiting group, and it is not optional here either. The caddies at Newcastle read the greens and the wind for you, they know which line off the blind ninth tee to take, and they are half the reason a visiting American shoots ten shots better than they would on their own. When the round finishes, sit in the clubhouse for a plate of chowder and a pint, and do not rush back to the hotel. This is the hour when the round settles into memory, and it deserves the pause.
The Second Evening, Restrained
The evening after the round is the celebration dinner of the trip, and we would run it in two halves. The first half is a pint at the Anchor Bar in the middle of Newcastle town, a proper Down pub on Bryansford Road that has been pouring pints since the 1920s and that fills on a Saturday with a mix of locals, walkers off the Mournes, and golfers off the course. It is the bar you go to when you want to be in Newcastle rather than in the hotel. Order the pint, stand at the bar for the first one, and let the round come down.
For the dinner itself the honest answer is not in Newcastle. The seafood story of the Down coast happens ten minutes south at Dundrum Bay, and specifically at the Buck's Head Inn in Dundrum village, where the kitchen runs a short menu of Dundrum Bay oysters, Kilkeel prawns, and Mourne lamb. Book it for eight, drive down in the long summer evening, and eat the oysters first. If Buck's Head is dark on the night you want it, the Mourne Seafood Bar in Dundrum is the second call, a bar and dining room owned by the same family that runs the Belfast room of the same name, and the plates are honest. Drive back to Newcastle at half past ten, walk into the Percy French for the last pint of the trip, and let the round be the story of the evening. The full sequence of tables around Newcastle, including where the Slieve Donard dining room fits and the one reservation we book weeks ahead, sits in our companion piece on where to eat around Royal County Down.
The Last Day, Along The Mourne Coast
The third day is the day American groups most often waste, because the instinct is to check out at nine, drive straight to the airport, and lose the coast on the way. Do not do that. The correct third day is a slow checkout, a drive south along the coast road to Ardglass, and a lunch on the way to whichever city you are flying out of. Ardglass sits twenty minutes down the coast from Newcastle, and Ardglass Golf Club, whose clubhouse is a fifteenth century tower house on the harbour, will take a walk-in group of four for nine holes on most mornings if the trip has one more round in it. The course is not Royal County Down. It does not pretend to be. It is a working links on a Down harbour, and it is the round to add on when the group is not tired.
If the second round is not in the plan, the drive south is still the right move. The Mourne Coastal Route runs from Newcastle through Annalong and Kilkeel and out to Rostrevor, and it is the finest short coastal drive in Northern Ireland. Stop at Bloody Bridge for the walk into the mountains if the day is dry, at Kilkeel harbour for the fish and chips at the Georgian House, and at Rostrevor for a pint at the Kilbroney Bar before the drive over the border. That is the third morning. It is not filler. It is the reason you came for three days and not two.
Belfast Or Dublin: Which Airport To Fly Out Of
The last decision of the trip is which airport, and it is not obvious. Belfast International is an hour from Newcastle, Belfast City sits closer at forty five minutes, and Dublin is two hours south by motorway. On paper Belfast wins. In practice the answer depends on what you want the last afternoon to be. If the group flies home the same day as the drive, Dublin is the better airport because the flight options to the east coast of the United States are wider and the timings are better for an afternoon departure. If the group is adding a night on the end, Belfast is the better city to add it in, because the Titanic Quarter and the Merchant Hotel and a proper dinner at Ox on the waterfront are a very different close to the trip than another night in Dublin.
Our rule is this. If the trip is four nights, end it in Belfast, and book a room at the Merchant for the last night. If the trip is three nights, drive back to Dublin, drop the car at the airport, and fly home on the afternoon of the third day. Do not try to see Belfast in an afternoon on the way to the airport. The city deserves better than that, and the round at Royal County Down is a fine enough note to leave the trip on without forcing a city in on top of it.
How We Actually Sequence The Three Days
The sequence, refined across many visits, runs this way. Day one is the drive from Dublin to Newcastle, check in at Slieve Donard, a walk on the beach to look at the course, a pint at the Percy French, and dinner at Brunel's booked from home the month before. Day two is the round at Royal County Down on the mid morning tee, a plate of chowder in the clubhouse after, a pint at the Anchor Bar in the town, and the celebration dinner at the Buck's Head in Dundrum. Day three is a slow checkout, the coast road south through Annalong and Kilkeel, a walk at Bloody Bridge, a lunch at Kilkeel harbour, and the drive back to Dublin airport for the afternoon flight home.
That is the trip. It is three nights, one round, two proper dinners, one working pub, and one coastal drive, and it works in May, in June, and in September. Book Slieve Donard for two nights the week you confirm the tee time. Book Brunel's for the first night and the Buck's Head for the second on the same day. Book the caddies at Royal County Down when you book the round. Do that, and the trip that most American groups arrive at without a real plan for is the trip they go home talking about. That is the point of the three days. That is why we would run it in this order.
Further reading from the Notebook
- Royal County Down, shot by shot
- Where to eat near Slieve Donard
- Slieve Donard and the Mournes from Newcastle
- The Mournes when the bracken turns
- Belfast and the Causeway, in luxury
- Ardglass and the Down links coast
- Where to eat near Ballybunion
- Where to eat near Lahinch
- Where to sleep in Ireland
- Build your trip around this round
- Golf itineraries, five and seven day
- The Printed Edit, Greens and Gorse