Walks near Monaghan
Monaghan is drumlin country, which decides what walking here is like. There are no hills of any consequence, but the ground never lies flat for more than a few hundred metres, so a walk that looks level on a map is a long series of short climbs. The other consequence is water. Drumlin clay does not drain, the low ground between the hills is wet most of the year, and paths that are fine in August are not in November. Boots, not trainers.
In the town
The four squares walk is the shortest thing here and it takes about twenty minutes at a slow pace. Church Square to the Diamond to Old Cross Square to Market Square, with the courthouse, the Rossmore Memorial, the Old Cross and the Market House along the way. It is laid out in more detail on the things to do page. Add St Macartan’s Cathedral on its hill on the Clones road and you have an hour.
The other town walk is the greenway. About four kilometres of it, flat, following the towpath of the abandoned Ulster Canal from one side of Monaghan to the other, with two locks, a lock house and three bridges along the way. Part of the middle section is on the road through the town centre. It is the only genuinely level walk in the area and the surface is good. There is more about what is built and what is still on paper on the Ulster Canal Greenway page.
Rossmore
Rossmore Forest Park is three kilometres out and has around nine marked loops, from under a kilometre up to eight. It is where most walking near the town actually happens, and it has its own page here because two paragraphs do not cover it.
Sliabh Beagh
Twenty five minutes north west of the town, on the Tyrone and Fermanagh borders, is the only upland in the county. Sliabh Beagh is blanket bog, heath and forestry, and it is a different landscape entirely from the drumlins. The point where the three counties meet is called the Three County Hollow.
Knockatallon is the usual starting point. There are four looped walks from there, the Tra, the Rock, the Bragan and the Esh, running from roughly six to ten kilometres. Two of them are on quiet country roads and are fine for anyone. Two go over forest track and open moorland and are a different proposition in bad weather, which up there is most weather.
The long route is the Sliabh Beagh Way, a waymarked way of about forty six kilometres. It starts at St Patrick’s Chair and Well in Co. Tyrone, crosses into Monaghan at Lough More, goes over Bragan and behind Knockatallon, and finishes at Donagh in Co. Fermanagh. Nobody does it in a day.
The Monaghan Way
This is the county’s national waymarked trail and the only Monaghan trail on the national walks scheme. It runs from Inniskeen, Patrick Kavanagh’s village, north to Lough Muckno at Castleblayney, about eighteen kilometres, and it is graded moderate. It starts along the bed of a disused railway and then takes to quiet lanes and fields, which is the good part of it. The finish into Castleblayney is along a main road with fast traffic and it is the weak part of it. Walk it in winter or early spring if you can, because the field sections grow over badly in summer.
Three shorter looped walks have been added to the route around Inniskeen and Toome, which is the easier way to sample it without committing to a whole day.
Elsewhere in the county
- Lough Muckno at Castleblayney, twenty minutes south, is the largest lake in the county and the leisure park around it has a network of short lakeside loops taking in the two islands. Easy, well surfaced, popular.
- Dartrey Forest, between Rockcorry and Cootehill, is another lost estate. The Dawson family house is gone but the mausoleum, the lakes and the woodland walks are there, and the road it sits on is bounded by a famine wall.
- Ballybay has walks around its town park on Lough Major and a wetlands centre with paths through about sixty five acres of reedbed and open water.
- Carrickmacross has a set of short looped walks that take in the town, the estate avenue and the lakeshore.
A word about the maps
Trail names and distances in this county are not consistent between the county council, Sport Ireland, Coillte and the various apps, and some routes have been renamed or rerouted without every listing catching up. Where a car park has a map board, trust the board. Where it does not, check the route on more than one source before you set out, and assume any figure you find online is approximate.
Details on this page last checked . If something here is out of date, it probably is our fault rather than yours.