Most people come to Ballygawley for one thing: Todd’s Leap, an activity centre spread over 100 acres of countryside where you can drive a 4×4 through mud, drop off a 30ft free-fall tower and ride a 500m zip line over the forest in a single afternoon. The village itself is small and quiet – a couple of streets at the meeting of the A4 and A5 in the Clogher Valley of County Tyrone, with a population under a thousand – so treat it as a base rather than a destination in its own right.
Todd’s Leap
Todd’s Leap grew out of off-road driving and has been running about thirty years; the 4×4 course is still the signature, and if you only do one thing here, make it that. The centre lists more than 20 activities, and the genuinely good ones are the high-thrill ones: the 500m zip line, the giant swing and the free-fall drop. The rest – clay pigeon shooting, air rifles, archery, paintball, a climbing wall and the Big Yella Slide – fill out a day for a mixed group or a birthday.
You can stay on site, in log cabins or compact ‘Snooze Boxes’, and there’s a restaurant and bar in a converted cottage with showers, changing rooms and free parking. Most activities are set up to take visitors with reduced mobility. The grounds host seasonal events too: Granda Ben’s zoo-trail Open Park Days through the year, and the GET OUT! horror nights and BOO Trail around Halloween, which run outside normal hours.
One practical note: activities are sold as packages and minimum charges apply, so an afternoon for a small group adds up quickly. Prices and daily hours aren’t reliably published in one place – Todd’s Leap is open year-round, but check toddsleap.com and book ahead, especially on summer weekends and during school holidays, when slots go early.
Heritage nearby
The reason to linger in the area is the Grant Ancestral Homestead, a couple of miles outside the village. This is the preserved cottage where John Simpson, great-grandfather of US President Ulysses S. Grant, was born; it’s a free site with a small display of farm artefacts, a picnic area and a play area. Worth half an hour if you’re passing.
Just outside Ballygawley is Errigal Keerogue, the old monastic site that gives the parish its other name (Errigal-Kieran, after St Ciarán of Clonmacnoise). The remains of an ancient church and a Franciscan friary founded by Conn O’Neill, first Earl of Tyrone, sit in quiet fields here.
Further out are two prehistoric sites worth the drive: Knockmany Passage Grave, a Neolithic tomb on a wooded hilltop near Augher, and Beaghmore Stone Circles, a Bronze Age group of seven circles and rows in the Sperrin foothills above Cookstown. The often-paired Wilson Ancestral Home, ancestral seat of President Woodrow Wilson’s family, is near Strabane – closer to an hour away than a side-trip. For the fuller emigration story, Omagh’s Ulster American Folk Park is about 12 miles west.
Ballygawley is also Mickey Harte country: the Tyrone manager who won three All-Ireland titles (2003, 2005 and 2008) was born here in 1952.
Getting there
Ballygawley sits at the Ballygawley roundabout where the A4 (Dungannon–Enniskillen) meets the A5 (the Derry–Dublin road). From Belfast it’s about an hour west on the M1 then the A4; from Dublin, follow the N2 and A5 corridor up through Monaghan and Aughnacloy. Bus Éireann’s Expressway Route 32 stops here. For Todd’s Leap, take the roundabout exit toward Omagh and watch for the brown tourist sign about two miles along, near Greenhill Kitchens.