Looking at Portballintrae on the map, the eye is drawn to a
small but perfectly formed horseshoe-shaped bay. At one end of this is a small harbour, formerly
the haunt of the local fishermen, but nowadays used mostly by leisure craft,
and at the eastern end is Salmon Rock Beach which, while popular with families,
is risky for swimmers. The Bush River
wends its way down to the coast to the northeast of the village, enclosing the
Bushfoot Golf Course. Back in 2007 it
was reported that Donald Trump was considering the village as the site of a £1
billion golf complex, but it never came to pass.
On the outskirts of the village are two strange mounds of
earth forming concentric rings. Known as
the Lissanduff Earthworks, it is not clear what their original purpose might
have been. Some archaeologists, however,
think they may have been linked to ancient worship rituals. Fast forwarding to the 16th
century, in 1588 a Spanish galleass called the Girona, part of the Spanish
Armada, sank off Lacada Point, further back along the coast from
Portballintrae. In the 1960s a treasure
trove from the ship was recovered by a team of Belgian divers, and was hauled
ashore at Portballintrae. It was the
greatest find ever recovered from a Spanish Armada vessel and the gold
jewellery from the hoard is displayed in the Ulster Museum in Belfast.
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The bay of Portballintrae. - geograph.org.uk - 435121. Photo by Des Colhoun, via Wikimedia Commons.
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