As you return along the promenade to the car park you can see, in the distance, the effect of the most recent geological event to shape the landscape here - glaciation.

The raised beach at Islandmagee.

During periods of glaciation, or ice ages, most of Britain and all of Ireland was covered in thick ice.

As things warmed up and the ice sheets retreated they left their mark on the landscape in many different ways, such as carving out u-shaped valleys such as Glenarriffe, along the coast road from Larne.

Here on the promenade the effect that can be seen is a raised beach on Islandmagee. If you look to your left from the power station stacks you will see cliffs and a beach in front of it.

Those cliffs were shaped by marine erosion but are now some distance from the sea.

That's because as the ice melted sea levels rose, but the land was rising too because the enormous pressure of great ice sheets was being removed and the land was, in effect, bouncing back up.

The land at Islandmagee rose further than the sea so what had been sea cliffs are now inland and what was sea bed is now a beach.

Islandmagee forms one side of Larne lough which is an area of special scientific interest and an RSPB bird reserve.

The lough is a breeding ground for several types of tern, including nationally-important numbers of Common and Sandwich terns, and if you do this walk during the summer you may see them diving for small fish.

Watch out for the brilliant white wings and deeply-forked tail of the Roseate tern, one of Europe's rarest seabirds. Swan Island, in Larne lough, is the only site in Northern Ireland for Roseate terns.

At the end of summer they leave for the wintering areas of west Africa and beyond but with winter comes the light-bellied Brent goose, escaping the harsher climate of Canada.