Murlough Bay sits on the wild stretch of coast between Fair Head and Torr Head — the name comes from the Old Irish muir-bolc, “sea inlet.” It’s one of the more remote spots on this coastline, reached by a narrow road with a hairpin bend at the Knockbrack viewpoint, with views across to the Mull of Kintyre.
The bay has a striking, and slightly haunting, literary connection. Sir Roger Casement, the Irish nationalist and diplomat executed by the British government in 1916 for his role in the Easter Rising, wrote to his cousin from Pentonville Prison while awaiting execution: “Take my body back with you and let it lie in the old churchyard in Murlough Bay.” His wish wasn’t granted — he was buried in London, then reinterred in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery in 1965 — but a memorial plinth at Murlough Bay still marks the site where his admirers once hoped to lay him.