Why Portstewart Strand is worth the drive from Belfast
If you're searching for dog walks in County Londonderry, Portstewart Strand is usually the one everyone mentions first, and it earns it. It's a long, wide, west-facing sandy beach owned by the National Trust, running from the main entrance near Portstewart town out towards the mouth of the River Bann. There's nowhere quite like it in County Down, which is why it's worth the run up the motorway and the A26 even for Belfast and Carryduff dog owners who've got plenty of parkland closer to home.
It's a proper beach walk rather than a park stroll - open sand, dune grass, sea air, and on a good day you can see right along the coast towards the Skerries and beyond. On a bad day it's horizontal rain and sand in your dog's ears, so it pays to know what you're walking into before you leave the car park.
The main route: straight down the strand
The obvious walk, and the one most people do, is simply to head from the main entrance down onto the beach and walk the length of it towards the Bann estuary at the far end. It's flat, mostly firm underfoot outside the very top of the tide, and there's no navigation required - you just walk until you fancy turning back.
This route suits almost any dog, from a young lurcher who wants to run to an older dog who just wants a flat surface and no steps. The one thing to watch is the far end near the river mouth, where the current from the Bann meets the open sea. It looks calm but it isn't somewhere to let a dog swim unsupervised - more on that below.
The quieter route: the dune path towards Barmouth
Running parallel to the beach, behind the dune line, there's a path through the marram grass towards the Barmouth area at the estuary end. This is the route to take on a windy day, because the dunes give you some shelter that the open beach simply doesn't offer, and it's also the quieter option when the main strand has day trippers and families on it.
This is also the stretch where you need to be most careful with dogs. The dunes and the estuary edge are important for ground-nesting birds and wading birds through spring and into summer, and wardens do patrol and signpost this during the season. Keep dogs on lead through here regardless of what the beach itself allows - it's not an area where recall training should be put to the test.
Where to park at the main gate
The National Trust entrance off the Strand Road is the usual starting point, with a car park right at the top of the beach. It's pay and display, and on a sunny bank holiday it fills up - get there early if you want a space without circling.
Portstewart Strand has the unusual feature of a slipway that lets cars drive straight onto the sand and park there, which the National Trust manages as a paid beach car park in season. It's a great option if you've got a dog who struggles with steps or long walks from the car, but check tide times before you go down, because the usable beach width changes a lot through the tide cycle and nobody wants to be moving a car off wet sand in a hurry.
If the main car park is full, there's usually informal overflow parking nearby along the Strand Road, but don't block farm gates or passing places - this is a narrow coastal road and it gets busy.
Can you actually let your dog off lead here?
This is the honest bit. Portstewart Strand is a National Trust site and, like most beaches along this coast, it tends to have seasonal arrangements around dogs - sometimes more relaxed outside the main summer season, more restricted during it, particularly near the dunes and the bird-nesting areas. The rules are posted at the entrance and they do change, so don't rely on what a friend told you last year or on what you remember from a previous visit.
In practice, a lot of owners do let dogs run on the open sand away from the dune line outside the busiest summer months, provided recall is solid and the beach isn't busy with families or ground-nesting birds. Where we'd always say keep a dog on lead, whatever the season, is near the river mouth at Barmouth - the Bann has a real current where it meets the sea, it's deceptively strong, and it's not a place to test a dog's swimming confidence or yours.
If your dog is reactive, easily overstimulated by other dogs, or a nervous flyer around loud surf and wind, a long line rather than full off-lead freedom is usually the better call on this beach. It's a big open space and that's exactly the kind of place a dog with patchy recall can get a very long way from you, very quickly.
What the ground is actually like in February
Winter at Portstewart Strand is a different experience to a July afternoon, and in some ways a better one for dog walking - fewer people, fewer other dogs to manage, and the beach largely to yourself on a weekday. The sand itself tends to stay reasonably firm underfoot through winter, which is more than can be said for a lot of inland walks around Belfast and County Down at this time of year.
What does change is the wind. This stretch of coast is fully exposed to the Atlantic, and a February walk here can mean genuinely difficult, sand-blasting wind that most dogs don't love and most owners underestimate until they're halfway along the beach. Bring a windproof layer, be realistic about how far you'll actually want to walk, and have a towel in the car - a dog that's been in the sea or just battered by wind and spray will be soaked and gritty by the time you get back.
Getting there and the traffic worth knowing about
Most Belfast and County Down dog owners will come up via the motorway network and then the A26 through Ballymena towards the north coast. It's a straightforward run most of the year, but through summer the whole Causeway coast corridor - Portstewart, Portrush, the road out towards the Giant's Causeway - carries a lot of tourist traffic, coaches included, especially at weekends and during school holidays. If you're planning a day trip rather than a quick walk, going early in the day avoids the worst of it both on the road and in the car park.
For owners coming from the Carryduff, Newtownbreda or wider Belfast area, a trip to Portstewart is a proper day out rather than a quick evening walk, so it's worth thinking about what happens to the dog on days you can't make that trip. That's really the gap that somewhere like Johnny's Doggy Hotel is there to fill - proper doggy day care or boarding near Belfast for the days the beach isn't practical, rather than a rushed walk round the block.