TYPE	Lakeside and deciduous woodland walk with views over Lough Erne and Green Turlough
DISTANCE	6.1 miles / 9.8 km
SURFACES	Mostly well made woodland tracks with some less defined path walking
HEIGHT GAIN / LOSS	530 feet climb
HAZARDS	Major road crossing, proximity to water and disused quarry

Walking in lakeland sounds attractive, but is actually very difficult. Lower Lough Erne alone has well over 125 miles of shoreline – but only a minute fraction of this is available to walkers. Also the best ‘lakeland’ walking is often on hills with views over the water – think of the English Lake District. So a good lakeland walk needs actual lakeside paths and hills with lake views. Ely and Carrickreagh Woods have both!

This is my walk introduction written in 2020 before the precious shore access was lost.

In addition, this walk passes through some glorious semi-mature beech and larch wood and visits a beautiful hidden valley with Turloughs (vanishing limestone based lakes!)

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TYPE	Circular walk through the estate visiting mature oak woodland, oak parkland and a wooded island with mixed woodland.
DISTANCE	5.2 miles / 8.2 km
SURFACES	Mostly well made compacted surfaces with gentle slopes. Inisherk section and parts of Culliaghs wood soft underfoot in places.
HEIGHT GAIN / LOSS	400 feet climb
HAZARDS	Some walking on estate roads. Some walking on difficult soft ground.

We are told that Ireland was once an island covered in great forests and in those forests the mighty oak was the dominant tree. Today this is hard to envisage with oaks a rarity, generally confined to rocky ravines like the Ness Woods or Roe Valley Country Park. Even in these places they tend to be small with limited canopies. This walk in glorious Crom estate looks at alternative oak woodlands which hint at the possible true ancient landscape of Ireland.

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TYPE	Coastal loop walk mainly on tracks but with short rough shore section (easy linear option). Significant climb required.
DISTANCE	3.5 miles / 5.6 km
SURFACES	Mostly well made compacted surfaces with variable slopes except for short rough coastal section (no path)
HEIGHT GAIN / LOSS	900 feet climb (linear option extra 100 feet)
HAZARDS	Exposed isolated area with no mobile phone signal Optional shore section rough and slippy (no path) Road walking on steep, narrow, but very low traffic road

Murlough Bay is one of our wildest and most beautiful places. If we had National Parks, this area should be part of one. However, it is not pristine wilderness – its rocks, woods and plains tell a story of long human occupation, farming, mining and spirituality – all adding richness to the fascination of this unique place.

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TYPE	Linear walk – riverside paths, minor road and mountain lanes and paths
DISTANCE	7.9 miles / 12.7 km (both ways)
SURFACES	Mostly well made compacted surfaces. One short section potentially wet open mountain ground
HEIGHT GAIN / LOSS	900 feet climb
HAZARDS	1.5 mile walk on a minor public road. Upper section of the walk is in exposed mountainous terrain No Dogs allowed on Gortmaconnell farmland.

Karst is a scientific term for a kind of landscape created by limestone and water where the normal behaviours of rivers, rocks and landforms don’t apply and indeed are turned almost inside-out! Rivers abruptly vanish underground to later re-appear at some apparently arbitrary point. Dry hollows, sink holes, rocky valleys and heights form a strange, sometimes dangerous alien landscape and everywhere is underlain with an ultra complex 3-D maze of wet and dry passages and caverns. There is nothing else quite like it and in the Marble Arch / Marlbank area of the Fermanagh Geopark we have a superb example.

This Karst walk follows a river upstream from deeply wooded Cladagh Glen, past the lower entrances to the Marble Arch cave system, up onto the Marlbank plateau and then along an initially dry mountain valley, past a sinkhole to join the Owenbrean river as it flows from its head waters in the blanket bogs of Cuilcagh Mountain.

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