Dark Hedges Estate — Hotel in Ireland

If you want to go and JUST SEE THE DARK HEDGES, keep reading. If you want to go walk the farm and see the shops, skip the rest of this review.

When you park at the visitor area you will be pointed towards shops and restaurants and to walk the grounds of a big estate house, all of which are lovely, but not necessary to see the Dark Hedges. Don't get me wrong... the estate and shops are lovely and quaint and the farmers do a good job, but not integral to the Dark Hedges. In fact, as you walk the trail through the estate, the trail eventually leads you to the main road and you cross the road on foot to the private road of the Dark Hedges. The private road is marked with a few signs telling you not to enter, only for private residents. But, we parked there on the side of the street quickly and walked down the street, snapped pictures, and went on with our countryside tour.

I feel bad for the residents of this street. This brings a lot of traffic to the area, and the toilets for the visitor center are only open during some hours. So people have resorted to using the bathroom on the side of the dark hedges road. When I was there the side of the road had no less than three spots where people had made a poo and left toilet paper all over. It was gross and those people...

If you're here purely for the dark hedges, please skip this review and enjoy the scenery. If you're on a Causeway Tour/ staying to eat in, please read.

Absolutely the worst place to have lunch, if there was any. We only ate there because we were on a tour bus and there was no other place around. The hotel looked fancy and we expected a menu to order from, but all there was was a (6 item) buffet of tasteless English food. And they charge you some 20-odd quid for a sorry plate of food. Honestly a disgrace for such a fancy-ish hotel. There's also the issue of seating. Since many tour buses arrived at nearly the same time, the guests had to queue for a long time for the buffet and eventually had no place to sit.

I'll suggest walking around the hotel to their pantry and ordering...

Forest is ok. Old and lacks maintenance just as the rest of the estate. Sadly, it looks like a pure tourist trap. The mansion looks almost abandoned, no historic plates to educate people about the history behind this estate.

We had lunch there because we were on a Causeway tour, but the plate of non-tasty carving was not up to Irish standards….

I guess it’s great if you’re a Games of Thrones fan, but don’t fall in the tourist trap of lunch and other 💲...