The road sweeps east out of Belfast, carrying the commuters home past the City Airport, the Norse Sea Irish Ferries and the Seacat and Stena vessels powering along Belfast Lough, to Holywood with its maypole and its ruined Old Priory Church — sections of which date back to the 13th-century, its Norman motte, the Esplanade, golf (18) and its little colony of media persons with their computer keyboards softly clicking, their faxes humming. Further east off Cultra’s leafy lanes, and by Helen’s Bay’s golf course (9), large houses seem content behind tall green hedges. The Culloden Hotel nearby was once a bishop’s palace. The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum attracts school children and tourists. At the scenic Royal Belfast Golf Club visitors require a letter of introduction. The shrouds of boats in the Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club rattle in the sea breezes nearby. There are pleasant walks along the shore as far as Bangor, and Redburn and Crawfordsburn Country Parks.

Grey Point Fort still maintains, as a museum piece, its formidable gun positions which guarded over the entrance of Belfast Lough through two world wars.

Helen’s Bay railway station sits above a splendid baronial turreted archway, crossing an avenue which once linked the Clandeboye estate to the rail line and beach. There are pleasant walks west in 110 acre Crawfordsburn Country Park with its boating, riding and walking facilities. Crawfordsburn’s Old Inn, thatched and white-washed, dates from 1614, making it one of the oldest in the island. Inland a few miles is the substantial Blackwood Golf Course Complex with 18 and 9 hole courses.

Bangor, 12 miles (20k) from the capital, at the entrance to Belfast Lough has grown from a seaside resort promoted by the old railway companies, to a great dormitory suburb of Belfast. Nothing remains of St Comgall’s 6th Century Abbey, once one of Europe’s great Universities where the good saint baptised a mermaid (St Murgen). Missionaries from Bangor kept the light of Christianity flickering through the Dark Ages. The Bangor Antiphony, the oldest dateable Irish manuscript (680-691 AD) rests in the Ambrosian Library, Milan, Italy. But now there are four yacht clubs, three 18 hole golf clubs, a new marina, fishing trips, row boats round the bay, safe beaches, a Tourist Information Centre in a fine corbelled stone one-time custom house by the harbour, Marine Gardens, Castle Park, Ward Park, and open-air band concerts.

A mile from the town centre is Bangor Golf Club (18) whose well groomed course stretches over attractive parkland and offers an excellent golf challenge in mature surroundings. Tel: 028 9127 0922.