Embracing a giant adventure in County Down

Eager to embrace the sights, sounds and giant spirit of Northern Ireland, Niamh Cullen (@niamhcullenx), and her friend Francis, partnered with Discover Northern Ireland to spend three unforgettable days exploring County Down. Read on to find out more about their breathtaking adventure.

Day One

Escaping the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives for a few action-packed days filled with excitement and laughter is what the perfect short break is all about. So, when we were presented with the opportunity to explore County Down we couldn’t wait to get started.

With the car packed with everything we needed for the weekend - and no luggage weight limits to worry about – we began our giant adventure with a two hour journey through some truly scenic countryside to our hotel for the weekend - the stunning Avoca Hotel on Newcastle’s promenade.

This place has beautiful views of the Irish Sea and the Mourne Mountains, the rooms are so luxurious – our ensuite even had a rainfall shower!

Having left our bags in the room, we headed to our first activity of the day – a pottery session at The Clay Project. Rebecca and Laureanne were so welcoming and this clay painting session was such a therapeutic activity – you could just switch off and concentrate on the craft.

Francis’ mug was very artistic, very on brand, and we both came away with lovely mementos we’ll cherish forever.  

We then made our way to vegetarian and vegan café, Birch for a delicious lunch. You need to check this place out next time you’re in Newcastle. We each had the seasonal, sweet potato soup and each bowl came with two generous slices of sourdough on the side, it was the perfect amount of food to leave us full but ready to continue our day.

This trip was packed with unique experiences in the amazing outdoors and as a massive Game of Thrones fan, I can’t tell you how excited I was to visit Tollymore Forest Park.

This place is absolutely magical - a park of stunning natural beauty with cascading rivers, towering trees and quaint bridges you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in Westeros. In fact, some scenes from the show were filmed here and we enjoyed following the Game of Thrones trail that takes you to locations including the real Wolfswood and the haunted forest north of the wall.

After our walk in the forest, we made our way back to the Avoca Hotel to freshen up and enjoy a post-adventure treat (or two!) in the hotel’s bar – there is something incredibly mesmerising about the views from the windows, you could get lost for days just staring at the waves crashing against the shore.

Ahead of this trip, we had asked my followers for recommendations on where we should visit and a lot of them recommended Brunel’s Restaurant so we were more than happy to give it a go.

We took the short walk along the promenade to the restaurant and absolutely loved it! We’re so glad we were told about this place – the Head Chef/Director is Gerry Cunningham - the food was delicious and there was such a buzz about it.

Northern Ireland is a real bucket list destination for foodies and it’s easy to see why. At Brunel’s this was seasonal cooking at its finest using some fantastic local produce.

We shared the salt and chilli squid for starters, and I had the chicken supreme as a main while Francis chose the seared seabass – it came with Portavogie prawns and from what he let me try, it tasted as good as it smelled.

After dinner, we made our way to The Wild Hare where we enjoyed the live music – they have live music every Saturday and Sunday night and it’s really worth checking out if you can.

We spent the rest of the evening having a ball in Kent Amusements. Honestly, it was such fun getting competitive with Francis on all the arcade machines (we won sooo many tickets) and we had a great time on the bumper cars too – you just can’t go to the seaside and miss the amusements.

Day Two

We hadn’t realised just how tired we were until we sunk our heads into our pillows. The beds at the Avoca Hotel are just so comfy. We both fell asleep almost instantly and the morning seemed to arrive very quickly.

Waking up on holiday is such a lovely feeling, it’s such a treat when it hits you that you’ve a day of fun filled adventure ahead of you. Enjoying a beautiful, cooked breakfast without having to do any of the cooking or washing up is also an added bonus.

We both enjoyed a hearty breakfast as we knew we had an active day in store but looking out at the majestic Mourne Mountains from the hotel we both couldn’t wait to get exploring.

Our guide for the day, Peter Rafferty of Walk the Mournes, met us at the hotel reception. We spent the day with him and visited some truly incredible spots.

For me, Peter is a national treasure, and he brought us to Hen Mountain, The Big Stone (Cloughmore), Kodak Corner, Spelga Dam, the location of St Patrick’s Stamp and even showed us the Narnia trail – it’s easy to see how this stunning part of the world inspired C. S. Lewis.

There are so many incredible outdoor sights in Northern Ireland but what amazed us the most was The Magic Road. We still haven’t quite worked out what sorcery is involved in this, but it was mind-blowing.

Peter backed his car onto the road and took the handbrake off. We both expected to start rolling slowly back down the slope but to our surprise we really started rolling UP THE HILL. Francis thought Peter was trying to catch us out and was moving the car on the clutch but no – he really wasn’t.

If you know how this works, please let me know but wow – talk about something you don’t see every day. This was an experience that really will stay with us for a long time.

As we both sat trying to rationalise what had just happened, Peter brought us to Cranfield Beach for a walk along the shore. Here, he said goodbye and gave us both a piece of oak branch and explained this was to symbolise protection and to keep travellers safe.

We were both gutted to see him leave and, once back in Newcastle, consoled ourselves over a cosy pint and some bacon and scampi fries at Mackens Bar & Restaurant – this place was recommended by my followers and the atmosphere, Guinness and craic was quite simply, perfection!

After these refreshments, and our morning hike, we went to do a beautiful double seaweed bath session at Soak Seaweed Baths. These baths are filled with hot seawater and seaweed that has been steamed to help release its natural minerals.

This ritual comes from ancient traditions and helps relax tenses muscles, regulate the metabolism and circulation. It was such a rejuvenating time, and the natural anti-ageing and anti-cellulite properties left our skin detoxified and silky smooth.

We returned to the hotel to freshen up before heading for dinner at Great Jones Craft and Kitchen and the food here, much like everywhere we’ve tried on this trip, was just delicious.

For our starter we split the pulled pork tacos and I had the prawn and chorizo pil pil linguini while Francis enjoyed the jerk chicken burger, we washed down our meal with a delicious bottle of white wine that we split between us.

Feeling tired after our day, we both thought about heading back to the hotel but soon realised we had one stop we wanted to make first. We had such a good time in Kent Amusements we went back again. Slots of fun!

We’re a very competitive pair and had great fun seeing who could set the high score in the basketball and tried not to crash into each too much on the bumper cars.

Day Three

We enjoyed another beautiful breakfast in the Avoca Hotel before we checked out and made our way to our last activity of the weekend – a session at Mourne Archery Centre.

This is a fab family run business, and we were welcomed to the centre by Katy who taught us how to aim and hold our bow and fire our arrows. Our competitive sides came out as our skills, or lack of, were put to the test across a range of activities including tic-tac-toe, classic archery and a balloon popping challenge.

I’m not quite sure who won, but I do know Francis was definitely counting the accuracy of his shots a lot more generously than I was.

We both really loved our giant adventure in County Down, from the amazing outdoors, the quality of the delicious food and drink on offer to the buzzing nightlife, there is such a wide variety of things to see and do here and we can’t wait to return.