A note from Deborah. Read her editorial perspective
Royal Portrush is the round Americans arrive at with a plan for the tee time and no plan for the days that hold it in place, which is a problem because north Antrim is a landscape that rewards a slower shape and punishes a rushed one. The round itself needs no help from us. The Dunluce Links, with the tee shot down the cliff at the 5th and the ravine carry at Calamity Corner, is the golf story of the trip and it will be the round you talk about at home. What we can help with is the three days that sit around it. Where to sleep on the arrival night, whether to base yourself in Portrush village or ten minutes east at Bushmills, which dinner is the correct arrival dinner and which is the celebration, how to build the morning of the round so you arrive rested rather than pacing the pro shop, what to do with the afternoon after eighteen holes, and how to spend the third morning across the Giant's Causeway, the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, the Antrim coast road, or the drive south to the Mourne mountains without turning any one of them into a coach stop. 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.
Three Days, One Championship Round
The three day trip around Portrush is the correct length for the same reason the three day trip around Ballybunion is. Two days will get you the round and a promenade dinner in the village. Four days will drift, because Portrush is a working Antrim seaside town and the coast around it is best seen in unhurried half days rather than long ones. Three days is the shape that lets you land at Belfast International, sleep well before the round, play the Dunluce Links on a rested morning, spend an unhurried celebration evening on the north coast, and leave the next day for the Giant's Causeway, the Antrim coast road, or the drive south to the Mournes without the last morning feeling wasted.
The base we book is the Bushmills Inn, the small country hotel in the village of Bushmills, ten minutes east of the first tee at Portrush and five minutes from the Giant's Causeway. You could stay in Portrush village itself at one of the promenade hotels, and we have friends who do, but the three day trip works best when the arrival and departure sit at a proper hotel and the round sits in the middle. The Bushmills Inn is the right base for all three nights of a first Portrush trip. The rest of this piece assumes you are sleeping at Bushmills for all three nights, which is the answer for most groups. We will note where a Galgorm Resort or a Ballygally Castle night makes sense as an alternate, but the default is Bushmills.
The Approach: Belfast International, Not Dublin
The first decision of the trip is the arrival, and the American instinct is to fly into Dublin because Dublin is the airport they know. We would not do that. Dublin is a two and a half hour drive from Portrush and it will burn the whole arrival day on the motorway, and there is a border crossing in the middle of it that adds nothing to the day. The correct arrival is to fly into Belfast International on the overnight from the east coast, collect the car by ten in the morning, drive forty five minutes north on the M2 and the A26 through Ballymena to Bushmills, and give yourself the whole first day on the coast. Dublin is a trip of its own and it will not be seen well from a stopover on the way to a round on the Dunluce. Fold Dublin into a separate trip, or into the return leg through Belfast, but do not fold it into the arrival day of a Portrush trip.
Once you are at the Bushmills Inn, the shape of the arrival day is straightforward. Check in, walk the ten minutes down to the Giant's Causeway before the visitor centre closes at four, and take the lower cliff path rather than the tour bus down. Come back to the inn for a hot bath and an hour on the bed before dinner. The round is tomorrow morning and the flight has taken more from you than you think. Come down at seven for a whiskey in the gas-lit bar off the main hall, and then eat dinner in the Taste of Bushmills dining room upstairs. This is not the night to drive out for dinner. This is the night to eat in the inn, sleep on Irish time, and be on the road to Portrush at nine the next morning with the group properly rested.
A Quiet Bourbon At Bushmills Before The Field Assembles
The gas-lit bar at the Bushmills Inn is the small stone room at the back of the ground floor with the peat fire and the low ceiling, and it is the pre-dinner drink of the trip. Order a Bushmills 21 rather than a pint on the arrival night, because the whiskey settles the group after the flight and the drive in a way a pint does not, and the bar keeps the full range of the distillery ten minutes up the road, including the Causeway blend you cannot buy at home. Sit for half an hour, read the room, and let the inn slow the group down before dinner. This is the pause that resets the trip.
The Taste of Bushmills is the upstairs dining room with the beamed ceiling and the tables set for two and four, and 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 the north Antrim coast is before you have made your other decisions about where to eat around Portrush. The kitchen cooks a menu of Ulster beef, Rathlin lobster, and Bushmills-glazed lamb, and the room seats around forty at proper spacing. Book it the week you book the round, ask for a table around eight, and eat three courses rather than the full tasting. Drink one glass of wine, not three. The round is at ten the next morning and the drive is fifteen minutes.
Round Day, Timed To The Minute
The round at Royal Portrush is the reason for the trip, and the mistake most American groups make on the morning of it is to be on the road too early. The tee time will be between nine and eleven for a visitor, and the drive from Bushmills is fifteen minutes on a quiet coast road through Portballintrae and around the White Rocks. Leave the inn an hour and a quarter before the tee, not two and a half. That gives you time for a slow breakfast in the dining room, a proper cup of coffee, and an arrival at the clubhouse thirty minutes before the tee, not ninety. The clubhouse at Portrush is functional rather than grand, and there is nothing to do in the extra hour except pace the pro shop and buy a sweater you will not wear at home.
Once at the clubhouse, meet the caddie at the caddie shed, warm up on the practice ground for twenty minutes, and put five putts on the practice green at slower speed than you think. The greens on the Dunluce are quicker than the practice green and the fall-off around every green is a calibration problem rather than a hitting problem, which means the warm up is really about tempo rather than about score. The round itself is covered in full in our companion piece How to play Royal Portrush, and we would read that piece the night before, not the morning of. On the morning of the round, the reading is done. The job now is to hit the first fairway with a three-wood down the left, take the tee shot at the 5th on the safe line, and let Calamity come to you rather than the other way around.
The Debrief On The Harbour At Portrush
The round at Portrush will finish around three in the afternoon on a nine or ten o'clock tee time in high season, and the temptation is to drive straight back to Bushmills and eat dinner there. We would not do that a second night in a row. The correct afternoon is a pint at the clubhouse bar looking back down the 18th, a shower and a change into fresh clothes back at the inn, and a walk on the East Strand at Portrush at low tide before dinner. Portrush is a working Antrim seaside town, not a golf resort, and the walk on the strand and along the promenade at five in the afternoon is the part of the day that separates the trip from a resort weekend. Put shoes and a jacket in the car for exactly this purpose.
For dinner on the round night, the room to book is Mermaid in Portrush harbour, the small seafood room above the pier that runs a short menu of Rathlin oysters, Portrush langoustines, and a Coleraine hake plate that is the best fish dish on the north coast. The kitchen is honest and the setting is quiet after the noise of the round. Book the eight o'clock sitting the week you book the tee time. If Mermaid is dark, which happens on Mondays in the shoulder season, our second call is Ramore Wine Bar on the harbour, a busier room that holds tables late for arriving guests and runs a solid modern Irish menu. If you would rather stay in Bushmills a second night, the French Rooms in the village of Bushmills itself is the honest walk-to-dinner alternative, and Galgorm Resort forty minutes south is the celebration option if you stretch the trip to four nights. On round night, we book Mermaid. Every time. The full dining sequence for the trip, including which table to book from the States and where to eat the morning after, is in our companion piece on where to eat around Royal Portrush.
The Second Night: Positioning For The Coast
The second night sleep is the piece of the trip most American groups overthink. You have two honest options. Stay at the Bushmills Inn a second night and take the fifteen minute drive back after dinner in Portrush, or move for one night to a hotel in the village at Portrush itself and take a two minute walk from dinner to bed. We have done both. The Bushmills drive after dinner is a straight run on a quiet coast road at ten in the evening, and if the group has a designated driver it is not a hard drive. The rooms at the inn are consistent between the two nights, and unpacking twice is the friction most groups underestimate on a three day trip.
The rule we follow is this. If the group is a foursome that wants three nights of the same hotel bed and a return to the peat fire for a nightcap, sleep at the Bushmills Inn all three nights and drive back after Mermaid. If the group is a foursome that wants the round night to feel like a working Portrush visit and would rather sleep above the strand than fifteen minutes from it, take the second night at one of the promenade hotels in Portrush and return to Bushmills only on the morning of day three. Both work. Neither is wrong. What is wrong is booking two hotels on night one, deciding on the road, and paying for a room you do not sleep in.
Day Three: Causeway, Antrim Cliffs, Or The Drive To The Mournes
The morning of the third day is the piece most American groups leave unplanned, and that is the piece that most often gets wasted. You have four honest options and the group should agree on one of them the night before, not at breakfast. The first is the Giant's Causeway at opening, five minutes from the inn, arriving at half eight before the coaches land and walking the lower path out to the organ pipes for an hour before the visitor centre fills. The second is the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge twenty minutes east, booked online the week before because walk-up slots sell out in season, followed by a coffee at Ballintoy harbour on the way back. The third is the Antrim coast road drive south, forty minutes through Cushendun and the Glens with a lunch at Ballygally Castle, then the run back into Belfast for the evening flight or the drive south.
The fourth is the honest extension. Do not fly out of Belfast at all. Drive south from Bushmills on the coast road to Newcastle in County Down, two and a half hours in a straight run, and pick up a second round at Royal County Down the next morning. Our full three day itinerary around Royal County Down covers that leg. Any of the four is a good ending. What matters is that the group picks one before the round on day two, so that the hotel booking, the tee sheet, and the flight time all line up. For the wider trip, our seven day southern golf itinerary covers the west coast run of Lahinch and Ballybunion in the order we would build it after Portrush. For where to sleep on the road south, our full Ireland stay guide covers the country houses and small hotels we book between Belfast and Newcastle. Book the round nine to twelve months out, book the dinners the week you book the round, and pick the third morning before you fly. That is the sequence. It works every time.
Further reading from the Notebook
- How to play Royal Portrush
- Three days around Royal County Down
- Where to eat around Slieve Donard after a round
- How to play Ballybunion
- How to play Lahinch
- Three days around Ballybunion
- Three days around Lahinch
- Portmarnock, shot by shot
- Seven-day golf itinerary, south
- Where to sleep in Ireland
- Build your trip around this round
- The Printed Edit, Greens and Gorse