Galgorm

Galgorm occupies 380 acres of parkland on the River Maine outside Ballymena, and made its name by building something Ireland had never had: a full outdoor thermal village. Riverside hot tubs, a Celtic sauna, outdoor heated pools, steam rooms, snow cabins and hydrotherapy run along the water, designed to be used in Northern Irish weather rather than in spite of it.

Accommodation has expanded well beyond the original manor. There are rooms and suites in the main house, plus log cabins, cottage suites, shepherd's huts and secluded forest dens scattered through the grounds — the kind of range that lets the resort work equally for a spa weekend, a family stay or a whole-house takeover in one of its residences.

Dining spreads across several venues, from a fine-dining room to a riverside restaurant and a traditional gastropub, and the estate runs falconry, archery, clay shooting and fly fishing on the Maine. Belfast is half an hour away, the Causeway Coast about an hour — which makes Galgorm an unusually practical base as well as a destination in its own right.