Magilligan Point, at the western tip of the Causeway Coastal Route, offers views over the River Foyle toward Donegal, alongside real historical and environmental significance.
Magilligan Beach
A golden sandy beach stretching seven unbroken miles from Point Road, past the Martello Tower and Benone Strand, to Downhill Beach. Parking and toilets are available; dogs are allowed on leads; pedestrian access only in places.
The Lough Foyle Ferry
Magilligan to Greencastle, Lough Foyle ferry crossing. Photo: @loughfoyleferry
The Lough Foyle Ferry runs from Magilligan Point to Greencastle on Donegal’s Inishowen Peninsula - a genuinely scenic 15-minute crossing, with departures roughly hourly and a car park opposite the terminal.
The Martello Tower
Built in 1812, alongside a matching tower across the water at Greencastle, to guard the entrance to Lough Foyle against a feared Napoleonic invasion. The circular stone tower stands 10m high and 12m in diameter, with walls thick enough to have housed a ground-floor powder store, first-floor living quarters, and a 24-pounder cannon on a rotating mount at the top - a genuine, well-preserved piece of early 19th-century military architecture.
Magilligan Nature Reserve
Designated a Special Area of Conservation and Area of Special Scientific Interest, the Magilligan Foreland is Ireland’s largest coastal sand accumulation, stretching around 20 miles. Its dune grassland and dune slack plant communities are, per the Department of the Environment, unmatched elsewhere in Northern Ireland. The dunes form through a genuine aeolian process - wind moving and depositing sand, which plants then stabilise into dune systems - not, as an earlier version of this page mistakenly put it, “planetary Air Bending.”
Lough Foyle
A designated Area of Special Scientific Interest and Ramsar wetland site, supporting rare fish species (including Allis shad, Twait shad, and sea lamprey), migrating Atlantic salmon, and nationally important populations of wintering waterfowl and waders - from Whooper swans and light-bellied Brent geese to red knots and Eurasian curlews.
Magilligan Prison
Worth mentioning plainly, since it’s a genuine local landmark: HM Prison Magilligan, a low-medium security men’s prison, has operated on the peninsula since it opened in 1972. It’s a working correctional facility, not a visitor attraction, and sits apart from the beach and nature reserve areas described above.
