Highlights of Northern Ireland Road Trip

With complimentary lounge access included, board your flight to Belfast where you'll pick up your hire car and make the short trip to your hand-picked accommodation, centrally located right on the river. From here, you'll have all of the Northern Ireland capital's delights on your doorstep, from the world-famous Titanic museum and the centre's elegant spread of Victorian buildings to the city's superb dining scene and those evocative murals that remember the region's chequered past. You'll have two days to take it all in.

Stay: Radisson Blu, Belfast (Superior)

Your scenic drive north today brings you into the beautiful Glens of Antrim, perhaps pausing to walk on forest trails past waterfalls, your base for exploring it all is an oak-beamed, 17th-century castle – one of Northern Ireland's leading hotels. You'll be able to relax among Ballygally's village charm before turning out for walks on windswept beaches and forested country parks. 

Choose to follow the impossibly verdant coastal route to Ballycastle, or alternatively, you might decide to detour inland to Ballymoney, the former home of the motorcycling brothers Joey and Robert Dunlop, and now more famously The Dark Hedges road featured in the epic Game of Thrones series.

Enjoy the golden windswept sands of Ballycastle before continuing along the cragged coast to the Bushmills Inn, a former coach house converted into a luxurious hotel. From here, you'll be perfectly poised to take in the famous Giant's Causeway. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is a spectacle of distinctive basalt rock formations, which legend says were created during a fight between two giants. The excellent visitor centre provides the chance to learn about both the myth and the geological explanation for the causeway's existence.

Stay: Bushmills Inn, Bushmills (Superior)

Plunging through rolling hinterlands and mapping remote bays, you'll arrive in Derry. Also known as Londonderry, it's Northern Ireland's second city and the only remaining example of an intact walled town in Ireland, making it one of the finest examples in all of Europe. Despite its 17th-century wonders, this inaugural UK City of Culture is alive with the present, its pubs ringing with live music, its walls resplendent in artsy murals and its redeveloped waterfront focusing on the ultra-contemporary Peace Bridge. You'll stay in a boutique city centre hotel.

Stay: Shipquay Hotel, Derry (Superior)

After some time to explore further, drive back through Northern Ireland's rural heartlands to Belfast, where you'll board your flight home.