Ireland (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Fionn Davenport [607]
Getting There & Away
The bus station is on Mountjoy Rd, just north of the town centre along Bridge St.
Goldline Express bus 273 goes from Belfast to Omagh (£10, 1¾ hours, hourly Monday to Saturday, six on Sundays) via Dungannon and on to Derry (£8, 1¼ hours). Bus 94 goes to Enniskillen (£7, one hour, six or seven daily Monday to Friday, three on Saturdays, one on Sundays) where you can change for Donegal, Bundoran or Sligo. Goldline Express bus 274 runs from Derry to Omagh (£8, one hour, every two hours), and continues to Dublin (£13, three hours) via Monaghan.
Return to beginning of chapter
AROUND OMAGH
Ulster American Folk Park
In the 18th and 19th centuries thousands of Ulster people left their homes to forge a new life across the Atlantic; 200,000 emigrated in the 18th century alone. Their story is told here at one of Ireland’s best museums, the Ulster American Folk Park ( 8224 3292; www.folkpark.com; Mellon Rd; adult/child £4.90/2.90; 10.30am-6pm Mon-Sat, 11am-6.30pm Sun & public holidays Apr-Sep, 10.30am-5pm Mon-Fri Oct-Mar). Last admission is 1½ hours before closing.
The Exhibition Hall explains the close connections between Ulster and the USA – the American Declaration of Independence was signed by several Ulstermen – and includes a genuine Calistoga wagon. But the real appeal of the folk park is the outdoor museum, where the ‘living history’ exhibits are split into Old World and New World areas, cleverly linked by passing through a mock-up of an emigrant ship. Original buildings from various parts of Ulster have been dismantled and re-erected here, including a blacksmith’s forge, a weaver’s thatched cottage, a Presbyterian meeting house and a schoolhouse. In the ‘American’ section of the park you can visit a genuine 18th-century settler’s stone cottage and a log house, both shipped across the Atlantic from Pennsylvania.
* * *
WALK: CUILCAGH MOUNTAIN VIA THE LEGNABROCKY TRAIL
Rising above Marble Arch and Florence Court like a miniature Mount Roraima, Cuilcagh (cull-kay) Mountain (666m) is the highest point in Counties Fermanagh and Cavan, its summit right on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The mountain is a geological layer cake, with a cave-riddled limestone base, shale and sandstone flanks draped with a shaggy tweed skirt of blanket bog, and a high gritstone plateau ringed by steep, craggy slopes, all part of the Marble Arch Caves European Geopark (www.europeangeoparks.org).
Hidden among the sphagnum moss, bog cotton and heather of the blanket bog, you can find the sticky-fingered sundew, an insect-eating plant, while the crags echo to the ‘krok-krok-krok’ of ravens and the mewing of peregrine falcons. The otherworldly summit plateau, strewn with boulders and riven by deep fissures in the gritstone bedrock, is a breeding ground for golden plover and is rich in rare plants such as alpine clubmoss.
The hike to the summit is a 15km round trip (allow five or six hours); the first part is on an easy gravel track, but you’ll need good boots to negotiate the boggy ground and steep slopes further on. Start at the Cuilcagh Mountain Park car park, 300m west of the entrance to Marble Arch Caves visitor centre (grid reference 121335; you’ll need the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Discovery series map, sheet 26). Right next to the car park is the Monastir sink hole, a deep depression ringed by limestone cliffs where the Aghinrawn River disappears underground for its journey through the Marble Arch Caves system. (Note that the OS map has wrongly labelled this river the Owenbrean.)
Climb the stile beside the gate and set out along the Legnabrocky Trail, a 4WD track that winds through rich green limestone meadows before climbing across the blanket bog