Mountains & Viewpoints in County Tyrone

Almost everything on this page sits in one range. The Sperrins run 64 km from Strabane to Lough Neagh, the largest mountain range in Ireland and its quietest, and five of the seven entries fall inside it. Sawel, at 678m, is the county top of both Tyrone and Londonderry, with no marked path, just a stone fence up boggy ground to the trig point; reckon on two to two and a half hours and waterproof boots. Dart Mountain, the second peak at 619m, stands on the same boundary and is usually walked with Sawel as a 17km loop.

Glenelly, the longest valley in the range, is a glacial trough of pasture and heather scattered with wedge tombs, stone rows and early-Christian raths, best taken slowly on the backroads. Mullaghcarn is the gentler day out: a 7.6 km trail from Gortin Glen Forest Park to Darach the Guardian, a carved wooden giant at 542m.

Dungannon is the outlier, in the south-east. The glass tower on the Hill of the O’Neill looks over seven of Ulster’s nine counties, from Lough Neagh to the Mournes, and it is the only one here reachable on foot from a town centre. The rest want a car and a forecast: the ground stays wet year round and the summits give up their views only when the cloud lifts. Davagh Forest, on the eastern side of the range, holds Northern Ireland’s first Dark Sky Park, so a clear winter night works as well as a summer afternoon.