Getting to Slieve Donard

We drove straight to Slieve Donard after summiting County Armagh’s highest point, Slieve Gullion earlier that morning. The start of the hike up Slieve Donard starts in the seaside town of Newcastle.

When we arrived in Newcastle the car park was full, so after doing a few laps in the car we spotted an overflow carpark in a field just behind and to the right of the main car park. A vintage car show was just starting with some lovely minis as we were leaving to hike up Slieve Donard.

We parked beside a lovely big tree which was where we had a picnic after our hike later that day.

The start of our hike up Slieve Donard

We instantaneously knew that there was going to be a big crowd on the hike, as we could see floods of people ahead of us on the trail. It’s so good to see so many families getting outside and enjoying the great outdoors. This is the first mountain that we met so many people on while doing the County High points (32 peak challenge)

From the carpark, we walked uphill into Donard Forrest, which was amazing. It was full of Mature trees which provided nice shade from the sun. We kept right of the Glen river and then we turned left onto a gravel forest track across the first bridge, from here we immediately turned right onto a cobbly track which ran on the left side of the river. It was so peaceful walking alongside the river and waterfalls. Once the track disappeared we followed a well-worn footpath southwest beside the river to join a second forest track. If in doubt while walking through the wooded area keep walking uphill following the path beside the river.

The forest was covered in a thin layer of fog but the sun was starting to break through. While walking up the hill out of Donard Wood it felt like we were walking through a scene out of the Lord of the Rings movie. We continue climbing up out of Slieve Donard scrambling over rocky areas while still walking parallel to the Glen River. As we walked out of Donard Wood we got our first glimpse of Slive Donard mountain but it was only the bottom section of the mountain as the peak was still covered in fog, but we still knew it was a big one.

About 100m after the top picture was taken the fog cleared and we could see the scale of the mountain that we were about to climb. We continued walking along parallel to the Glen river but the wooded area was now on our right-hand side. The footpath was in excellent condition with stepping stones in all the boggy places and river crossings.

After we left the last section of woodland we could see that we were walking towards the end of a valley and that the Mourne mountain trail swept up to the left to meet a Col between Slieve Donard and Slieve Commedagh. We continued walking up along the valley ascending slightly the whole time but it just felt like a pleasant uphill walk at this stage. We could see the hike was about to get much harder as the trail followed a very steep section at the end of the valley that walks up over the Col between the two mountains.

We eventually crossed the river that we have been following, at this point it was only a small stream. This was the first point of the hike that it became a steep hill. The footing of the path was excellent, every vertical step seemed to have a perfectly placed stone to form a safe position to place your feet. The ascent from the valley to the Col looked worse than it actually was and we hiked to the passing in 15 minutes.

This was our first glimpse of the wall that runs up over the top of the Mourne mountains, if we are being honest we didn’t do much research on this hike beforehand, but when you see this wall and you don’t expect it to be as big as it is, we were just amazed at its scale at such an elevated height. Just as we reached the wall, Ourlittlehiker was starting to nod off and we know now from previously stopping on other mountains when she is like this, that it can upset her and disrupt her sleep. We still felt in good walking form, so we took a left at the wall and continued up the toward Donard’s peak, but the sight of Slieve Donard up over us was very daunting.

I imagine there have not been many sleeping babies up on Slieve Donard, she was having such a good sleep while her Mammy and Daddy were sweating buckets but loving the challenge and views ahead of us. At this stage, the weather was getting very warm but if the wall was not there we would need our coats as the higher we walked the colder and stronger the wind became. It was a hard pull up the final section of the mountain but we eventually got a view of the Carn on top of Slieve Donard and it looks amazing. The cairn is built up on top of the wall on a raised platform.

At this stage of the hike we were starting to get slightly tired but Ourlittlehiker was still asleep. We were starting to get a small bit of attention from other people wanting to see the baby in the bag and unfortunately, they woke her up. This gave us an opportunity to take a few extra photos and have a small break and a quick snack. We were amazed that so many people were on top of the mountain, we usually see 2-3 people on top of most other mountains but there must have been over a 100 people up on the summit and maybe double that were still walking up the mountain.

We didn’t stay long at the top as it was very windy up there and at this stage, we were considering hiking another peak (this did not happen). On the way down the steep mountainside, we kept away from the path as it was slippy so we walked down on the grass zig-zagging to help our poor shakey knees.

We quickly descended back toward the saddle between the two mountains but we saw a number of people with running shoes falling from rushing and having poor footwear on. The descent from the saddle down to the top of the valley was a lot easier as the large stepping stone provided good footing for our tired legs. At this stage of the descent, we are still considering climbing Slieve Foye, the lack of accommodation has us slightly worried.

We noticed that we lost one of Ourlittlehikers spare hiking coats on the way up to the peak of Slieve Donard, we taught we lost it at the end of the woodland so we were keeping a keen eye out for her coat. We spotted her coat nicely placed on a rock exactly where we taught we lost it. We were so happy we found the coat as it was a present from a very generous friend.

When we reached the bottom, and the end of the hike, the overflow car park that we left empty was now full. We had a small picnic when we got back to the car, we left Ourlittlehiker in her hiking bag when we all ate our lunch. She loves just sitting there eating and looking around, it also helps us keep her safe from randomly running after dogs and cats.

While eating our picnic on the grass carpark, we tried to get accommodation near the next mountain but every hotel and Airbnb was booked in advance for the bank holiday weekend, so we decided to stop rushing and drive home after this mountain. After our picnic, we changed out of our hiking gear and went for a walk around the Car show, Ourlittlehiker loved all the cars and the noise they were all making.

Our Verdict on Slive Donard, Co Down Highest point

After walking 3/4 of the high points in each county of Ireland we were well used to walking on our own and being on top of all the mountains on our own. It was a bit of a shock to the system when we saw the large crowds walking up to the top of Slieve Donard.

We loved this hike, the footing on the way to the top of the mountain is very good and the path was very busy. The mountain trail is very steep in certain sections but when you reach the top of the mountain the views are amazing and well worth hard pull. This has been our favourite hike so far out of the 32 counties high points.

Advice for climbing Slieve Donard

• It is very steep so bring good hiking boots.
• We hiked it on a bank holiday, go on a weekday if you want to avoid the crowds.
• Bring lots of water as this hike will take over 4 hours.

The post Slieve Donard– Co Down Highest Point appeared first on Our Family Hikes.

Northern Ireland is in the top northern section of Ireland. The Island of Ireland is separated into two countries, the Republic of Ireland (26 Counties) and Northern Ireland (6 Counties). Northern Ireland belongs to the United Kingdom but it still has its own soccer team similar to Scotland and Wales.

Road Tripping to Northern Ireland top attractions

As we live in the South of Ireland and our house is 4 hours from the main attractions in Northern Ireland, we needed to plan a road trip. We are used to these long driving expeditions, as we are currently undertaking the 32 counties high point challenge (See here).

Preparation for our road trip consists of doing a large grocery shop in our local supermarket for picnics and loads of small breaks. Packing all our hiking and adventure gear and having the car fully stocked for an early start on the morning of the road trip.

Our drive to northern Ireland starts at 5 am on a Saturday morning, we all wake and quickly prepare for the drive. Ourlittlehiker is getting used the early starts and loves a good drive, as she knows at the end she is going on a big adventure. Our road trip consisted of Ourlittlehiker sleeping for 3 hours straight then a small break for snacks and to stretch our legs, then a sing-song for the final hour. You cannot beat a good road trip to build up excitement on the way to Northern Ireland’s top attractions.

Northern Ireland top attractions

Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge

Our honeymoon in 2015

We previously visited Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge on our honeymoon in 2015, so we knew what was ahead of us but we were still super excited. Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge is in the County of Antrim and in the small coastal town of Ballintoy.

The Northern Ireland rope bridge opens at 9:30 am. We arrived at Carrick-a-rede car park at 10 am and the carpark already seemed very busy, car parking in Carrick-A-Rede is free. Our main goal here was to try to get to the rope bridge early to try and beat any possible large queue to cross the bridge.

We all quickly changed our clothes (it was a long drive) and had a small snack and walked down toward the ticket office to buy our tickets to cross the bridge.

How much does it cost to cross Carrick a Rede rope bridge?

The Tickets to walk over the rope bridge cost £8.00 per adult and £4 for a child but Ourlittlehiker was free as she is still a baby.

Walking up to Carrick A Rede Rope Bridge’s ticket office

How long is the walk to Carrick a Rede rope bridge?

The walk from the Carrick-a-rede ticket office to the rope bridge is slightly over 1km but the surface of the footpath is extremely good. The walk to the rope bridge was filled with small footbridges over gorges, viewing points with telescopes and nice seating areas to admire the pure beauty of the cliffs below.

We met many older people walking the footpath to the rope bridge and they all seemed to be struggling slightly with the steep steps on the final section of the footpath descending down to the entrance of Carrick-a-rede. The Map below here shows the sections that have the stepped areas.

The Map of Carrick a Rede Rope Bridge

Carrick a rede rope bridge walk

As we approached the rope bridge we walked down to the entrance of the bridge that has a National Trust Employee checking tickets and that also ensures that only 8 people cross the bridge at one time.

Gina carried Ourlittlehiker in her Deuter backpack for half the walk from the ticket office to the rope bridge, Ourlittlehiker loves being independent lately and has started to walk small safe sections of our trails. We love looking at the excitement in Ourlittlehikers eyes at all the great attraction she gets to explore with us.

We were really lucky and only had to wait to cross the bridge for 2 minutes (this is why we tried to be here early). After the gated entrance, we walked down an extremely steep steel bridge to the start of the rope bridge. The Steel steps are very steep and you will need to hold onto the railing with both hands.

Our first impression of the bridge and crossing onto the island was the scale of the sheer depth of the drop (30m high) and as you would expect, the high standard of maintenance to the bridge, everything on the bridge looks brand new and super safe. While walking over I still kept thinking I was going to trip up and fall from being super clumsy.

Gina carried Ourlittlehiker over the rope bridge and she looked very nervous. I can’t blame her for being nervous because the bridge was swaying in the wind. But it was great fun walking onto Carrick a rede island using the rope bridge and after the adrenaline wore off we were ready to walk back over to the mainland again. We did a small bit of bird watching on the Island but Ourlittlehiker is more interested in sheep at the minute, so we couldn’t keep her attention looking at the birds for too long.

When we were walking back over the rope bridge the wind seemed to pick up slightly, so poor gina and Ourlittlehiker got blown around a little bit more on the return walk to the mainland. As we were walking back out past the entrance gate to the bridge we noticed about a 15-minute queue to get onto the island, so come early to avoid the ques.

We walked back to the main ticket office and got a certificate free of charge from the lovely staff in the office to say that Ourlittlehiker walked over the bridge. The certificate also meant that we got a free Hot chocolate in the Cafe. She also got a free book with “50 things to do before you turn 11 1/3” by the national trust.

Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge Verdict

This is a great tourist attraction and it is easy to see how this is one of Northern Ireland’s top tourist attractions. We loved the rope bridge but we were very lucky with the weather and the crowds were very small when we were there.

• We highly recommend this when visiting Northern Ireland as this is truly one of Northern Ireland’s top Attractions.
• Remember to look for your free Certificate for your child, and hot chocolate ;)

The Giants Causeway- Northern Ireland top attractions

After leaving Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, we drove to the Giants Causeway. This took us around 20 minutes because we stopped a couple of times to admire the beautiful scenery along the coastal road. This is regarded as one of Northern Ireland’s top attractions by many people.

The Giant’s Causeway Facts

The Giants Causeway is in the County of Antrim and beside the town of Bushmills, that is also famous for its Whiskey (the Whiskey tours here are very good). The Giants Causeway rock formation was formed because of volcanic activity around 50 million years ago. Folklore stories suggest that the Giant Finn Mac Cool built the causeway to fight a Scottish giant, this is the story we told Ourlittlehiker, the volcanic stuff can wait for another time.

The Giants Causeway Visitor Centre is one of Northern Ireland top attractions

The Giants Causeway has a large car park that is fully attended by helpful staff to direct you to unoccupied spaces. The visitor centre is built into the side of the hill and is very conspicuously concealed, it has a lovely green roof (my construction lecturer would be proud that I remembered that) and stone columns on the side giving it an appearance of the unique rock formation at the sea, which is pretty cool.

It cost £11.50 each per adult to park at the visitor and to enter the visitor centre. It is actually free to walk down to the Giants Causeway but the whole area and facilities at the Giants Causeway are definitely some of the best on the island of Ireland in terms of tourist amenities, so I do not mind paying for better quality facilities.

We did our usual quick look around the visitor centre and went straight out to the main tourist attraction. We walked out into an area that had a queue for a bus that delivers people from the visitor centre to the Giants Causeway attraction.

As we love a good hike, we walked down the road towards the sea, about 20 meters down the road, we saw the rock that marked Giants Causeway. We loved the walk down the road to the Giants Causeway, we walked along the side of the road on a tarmac footpath but as it was sunny out, the footpath was very crowded and we sometimes had to step onto the road. This was not the safest option as the bus drivers delivering tourist’s down to the Causeway seemed to drive pretty hard, so keep an eye out for this if you walk down,

We quickly reached the start of the Giants Causeway, the rock formation on the coastline is an amazing sight. We walked down toward the sea to get a few pictures but the crowds were pretty big in every direction we turned so we decided to walk back toward the higher section of the volcanic rocks.

After hanging around for 10 minutes trying to get some space from the growing crowds we finally got a nice picture. We were on a pretty tight time schedule as we had only budgeted enough time to walk down to the Northern Ireland top attraction and then walk back to the car but we decided we would try to get a quick hike in while we were here at the causeway.

The Giants Causeway Hiking trails

Views from the Giants Causeway Cliff walk

We decided to hike the “Red Trail” up over the top of the hill behind the giant’s causeway. The trail starts by following the edge of Port Noffer along a gravel track, which then starts to rise until we reached a Y in the path. The path that we followed was signposted for 162 steps which cut through the side of the Giants causeway cliff. The views from here are amazing.

The path rises really quickly and the steps are very manageable. There are really good handrails on the sides of the steps and rest stops, so we reached the top of the Red trial really quickly. When we reached the top of the path we noticed that the majority of the crowd stay down at the coastline of the giant’s causeway and don’t venture up into the hill, so it was really nice to get breathing room to chat and play with Ourlittlehiker.

The path on the top of the Giants Causeway Red trail hike was flooded with lovely yellow Gorse flowers that gave off an amazing smell of coconut. It was lovely walking along the cliff edge looking down at the Giants Causeway with a lovely smell of Coconut in the air.

When we reached the peak of the hill we could look right down on to the Giants Causeway and the views of the coastline were simply amazing. It’s a pity that more people do not walk this trail when they are visiting this tourist attraction. As for us, we feel this provided the best views along the Giants Causeway coastline.

We continued along the trail which now had sheep on one side and Coconut smelling flowers on the other. The trail was leading us back toward the visitor centre and within 10 minutes we were back at the visitor centre. When we walked into the visitor centre, we took Ourlittlehiker out of her bag and she was loving all the animated Giants on the big screens and the cartoons.

Ourlittlehiker enjoying the movie

The Giants Causeway Verdict

The Giants Causeway is one of northern Ireland top attractions, and it deserves to be as well. Okay, they charge you to access the visitor centre and neglect to tell you that it’s actually free to walk down to the Giants Causeway. The visitor centre cost is a little bit pricey too, I do not mind paying for a good experience and good facilities but I felt we only spent 10 minutes here and the rest of the time down at the Giants Causeway.

The crowds at this attraction are massive and way bigger than we had expected, many of the tourists here seemed to forget basic manners and would nearly push you out of the way to get a photograph.

If you are visiting the Giants Causeway consider walking the “Red Trial” to get the best views and some space to soak in the beauty of the Giants Causeway.

Slieve Donard Mountain Hike

We previously hiked Slieve Donard, see here for some hiking tips. If you are into good mountain hikes or even amazing mountain views, this hike is located in the town of Newcastle and is one Northern Ireland’s top attractions and it’s totally free. This is the best hike in Northern Ireland. Slieve Donard is the highest mountain in Ulster and Northern Ireland. The views on this hike are amazing, the Woodland trails run parallel to a river and waterfalls and the pathway provides a perfectly safe access route to the mountain peak. This hike will take 3-5 hours to walk but it is worth every second.

Family Friendly Accommodation in Northern Ireland

Glamping

After we did all our exploring around Northern Ireland, we were ready to check into our Glamping accommodation. Our Glamping site was called Carrowmena activity centre and was located near Limavady. This suited us perfectly as we were going to hike a County high point near here the following day. The Glamping site is situated on an old school grounds in the centre of the local town.

We booked into the Glamping site 1 week previous to our arrival, as we were over 4 hours drive away from our house. We were really lucky to get the last available Bell tent in the campsite. It cost £70 to stay in the Bell tent for the night, the tent has 2 single beds and 1 double bed so potentially sleeps, 4 people. The Northern Ireland Glamping experience was Ourlittlehikers first time in a tent and she loved it, I’m not too sure if it was that the bed were at perfect height for her to run and jump onto or she simply just loved the tent but she laughed for 1 hour straight, so that made us two very happy parents.

Like many campsites, the Carrowmena glamping site had a shared a kitchen, shower and toilets with the other glampers, for us, this makes the experience even more fun. All the kids at the campsite were all running around laughing and joking all night. We have stayed in a lot of campsites and Carrowmena has possibly the nicest, most polite staff we have ever met. The staff could not have been any more helpful and super informative.

Carrowmena Activity Centre Verdict

Carrowmena Glamping gets a 10 out of 10 for the staff alone, we will be coming back here the next time we are in Northern Ireland hiking and camping.

Thank you.

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