Loughareema, a few miles from Ballycastle, sits in unspoiled, uninhabited, heather-covered hills — and does something genuinely strange: it disappears. The lake sits on a leaky chalk bed with a natural “plug hole” that clogs with peat, causing the water to rise, sometimes covering the road that crosses it. When the plug clears, the lake drains away underground within hours, sometimes leaving the lakebed almost dry.
The road across it has proven dangerous. On 30 September 1898, Colonel John Magee McNeille was racing to catch the 3pm train from Ballycastle and had his coachman drive on despite the road being underwater. The horses panicked in the flooded crossing, overturning the carriage into water more than twenty feet deep — the coachman, both horses, and Colonel McNeille himself all drowned.
It’s a striking, slightly eerie place to see even now — just don’t try to cross the road when the water’s up.