Northern Ireland

Line of Duty fans can go 'round the houses and down the bloody drains' on Belfast location tour

Caroline McComb with Cáelán McVeigh from the Grand Central Hotel to launch the new Line of Duty Experience. Picture by Stephen Hamiltonn / Press Eye
Caroline McComb with Cáelán McVeigh from the Grand Central Hotel to launch the new Line of Duty Experience. Picture by Stephen Hamiltonn / Press Eye Caroline McComb with Cáelán McVeigh from the Grand Central Hotel to launch the new Line of Duty Experience. Picture by Stephen Hamiltonn / Press Eye

`LINE of Duty' has become the latest Northern Ireland-filmed TV show to spawn its own tourist trail of its locations.

Fans of the hit BBC police corruption drama will swap high speed car chases for a coach trip on the guided tour of the most recognisable filming locations.

The tour starts with lunch at Belfast's Grand Central Hotel in Bedford Street which is located beside the Invest NI building, setting for AC-12 HQ.

Among the stops across the city centre are `Pelbury House', headquarters of the Central Police force which provided the backdrop of Ted Hastings famous peaked-cap adjustments and `Kingsgate Printing Services', the building used as a front for members of the OCG (Organised Crime Gang).

There is also a stop at the unglamorous surroundings of the lorry park where DI Kate Fleming shot Ryan Pilkington before doing an inexplicable runner with Acting DSI Jo Davidson in Series Six.

Visitors will even be able to recreate their own secret rendezvous in the iconic graffiti-daubed subway location favoured by DI Steve Arnott and DI Fleming.

Also on the tour is the site of the ambush that saw villainous lawyer Jimmy Lakewell targeted by his OCG comrades and the bridge where DI Fleming fired an assault riffle at a fleeing four-wheel drive, killing erstwhile partner and mole Dot Cotton, Brentiss Prison and Hickey's Bookmakers.

It ends with an AC12 cocktail or Wee Donkey mocktail in the Observatory, Ireland's tallest cocktail bar, with a Hastings Hotel Ted Hastings' Line of Duty duck, designed with some of the north's best-known sayings.

Julie Hastings marketing director of the hotel group said joining forces with McComb's Coach Travel for the tour was an open and shut case.

"Given our namesake with everyone's favourite superintendent, we had to be the first to launch a Line of Duty Experience."

It follows popular `Game of Thrones' tours around filming locations in the north.

Tours take place on July 3, 17 and 31; August 14 and 28 and September 11 and 25 with booking at www.mccombscoaches.com