Antrim Hills Way
The Antrim Hills Way is a horseshoe-shaped walking trail through the Antrim Hills, amongst some of Ulster's finest scenic landscape. It is all within the southern part of the area designated the "Antrim Coast and Glens Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty".[1]
The trail runs for twenty-two miles from Glenarm Village west to Slemish mountain. Part of the trail use public footpaths but much of it is on permissive paths, where dogs are not permitted to avoid disturbing or endangering livestock.
Contents
The route
The start of the Antrim Hills Way is in the pretty village of Glenarm, at the foot of the glen of the same name. From here it follows part of the Ulster Way; it heads south up the slope of the glen and into the hills to Black Hill (1,250 feet), then Scawt Hill (1,240 feet) and Robin Young's Hill (1,260 feet) from which point the trail runs along the top of the Sallagh Braes, a remarkable semi-circular rock escarpment.
The trail reaches its summit on Agnew's Hill, at 1,555 feet. This summit provides a broad vista showing almost the entire Antrim Hills Way, and with views far over the Antrim Hills and beyond to the Inner Hebrides and Kintyre to the north, over Larne and the North Channel to the east.
West of Agnew's Hill the trail departs from the Ulster Way and continues over the blanket bog moorlands and through grazed farmland until it reaches the edge of the hills at the distinctive, solitary shape of Slemish, the mountain beneath which, according to legend, St Patrick toiled as a slave for six years at the end of the fifth century.
