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Town in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland
Photo: Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Coleraine is a town in County Londonderry in Northern Ireland. Standing 55 miles northwest of Belfast, it's a transport hub and home to Ulster University. It has limited sights of its own but is within a few miles of major attractions along the Antrim coast.
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The mound is an Iron Age fort, circa 500 BC. Given its location, the Normans probably palisaded and garrisoned it by knee-jerk reflex, but they never built a stone castle. But excavations around it in the 1970s revealed dwellings from 7000 BC, the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age. These were ten tepees, with saplings bent into a framework then covered in hides, and with a central hearth. Although there's evidence of earlier human activity in Ireland, this is the earliest fixed "village"; it had been thought that Mesolithic people here were nomadic hunter-gatherers and that settled dwellings and agriculture only came later in the Neolithic or New Stone Age.
They're just about big enough to ride on. Only intermittently open, check ahead on their website.
Popular Chinese chain, the early bird is especially good value.
Thai.
A cheap and cheerful place on Waterside just west of the bridge, BYOB.
Pub just west of the bridge in the former Court House, with a good range of food, beer and spirits. It's no longer part of the Wetherspoon chain.
Efficient Accor chain hotel.
Clean slick hotel by A26 / A29 roundabout, handy for motorists.
Welcoming B&B southeast edge of town.
Mid-price hotel, spa and leisure centre southwest edge of town.
Marina with caravan and camping pitches on the road to Portstewart.
By bus
Goldliner Bus 218 runs hourly from Belfast Laganside (not the main bus station) via Antrim, Ballymena, Cloughmills and Ballymoney, taking 1 hr 50 min.
By road
From Belfast follow M2 / A26 north past Ballymena, 60 miles. From Derry follow A2 / A37 via Limavady.
Walking will get you most places. Take the 140 triangle bus for the University.
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Derry, Derry and Strabane · Regional · LDY
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