Kilbroney Park – Narnia and the Big Stone

Overview

The half-mile Narnia trail at Kilbroney isn’t just a gimmick for the kids. The park was visited by Dickens, Thackeray and Seamus Heaney, and is widely reckoned a likely model for the woods C.S. Lewis dreamed up as Narnia – and the trail starts, fittingly, through a wardrobe door. That’s the headline, but it undersells the place: this is a 97-acre forest park on the north shore of Carlingford Lough, under Slieve Martin just outside Rostrevor in County Down, and it packs in a giant’s boulder, an arboretum of 500-year-old oaks, and the best downhill mountain biking in the country.

If you can manage the climb and only do one thing, walk up to the Cloughmore Stone for the view over the lough to the Cooley Mountains. If you’re here with small children, the Narnia trail and the play park will hold them happily for an afternoon.

The Cloughmore Stone

Roughly 300 m above the village, on the slopes of Slieve Martin, sits the Cloughmore Stone (‘the big stone’) – a 30-tonne granite erratic carried here and dropped by glaciers in the last ice age, and carved with Victorian-era graffiti. Local folklore prefers a better story: Finn Mac Cool flung it at a Scottish giant during a fight, and when the giant tore up a fistful of earth and threw it back, it missed and landed in the sea – the lump became the Isle of Man, and the hole it left filled with water to make Lough Neagh.

A ten-minute hike from the top of the two-mile forest drive gets you there, and a little further along, Kodak Corner frames the lough and hills in one sweep – the photographers’ spot, as the name admits.

The trees

For all the views, the trees are the quiet reason to come. The self-guided Tree Trail is a two-mile loop from the café car park, the specimens marked with numbered plaques rather than signposts, so pick up a leaflet. It takes in a 500-year-old sessile oak, a 200-year-old Monterey pine, a Turkey oak that’s the most photographed of the lot, and a dozen redwoods planted between 1880 and 1890 when the estate’s owners were importing exotics.

The one to find is Old Homer, near the Fairy Glen pedestrian entrance: a 200-year-old holm oak leaning at a full 45 degrees, with bark like snakeskin, voted Northern Ireland’s Tree of the Year in 2016. The ashes of the Scottish folk singer Danny Kyle were scattered beneath it.

Narnia, the Fairy Glen and the play parks

The Narnia Trail is a half-mile woodland walk dotted with carved characters – Mr Tumnus, the White Witch, Aslan – entered through that wardrobe door. It pairs naturally with the Fairy Glen, a short, varied riverside path along the Kilbroney River through wild garlic, primroses and bluebells. There are two play parks pitched at different ages, plus football pitches and tennis courts (booking and a charge), so a family can fill a day without driving anywhere else.

Mountain biking

The Rostrevor Mountain Bike Trails, threading through the park and the wider Rostrevor Forest, include Ireland’s first two official downhill trails – steep, technical descents that draw riders from across the island, alongside gentler family loops. You don’t need your own bike: hire and an uplift shuttle run from East Coast Adventure and the Life Adventure Centre. More than one visitor rates these the best trails in Ireland.

The estate’s history

Kilbroney began as ‘The Meadow’, part of the Ross family’s estate from the early 1700s, with a lodge built in 1716. The Rosses’ most notorious son was General Robert Ross, the British commander who burned the public buildings of Washington – including the White House – in 1814. The estate later passed, in 1919, to a branch of the Bowes-Lyon family: the future Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret holidayed here as children in 1937, and during the Second World War the grounds held a prisoner-of-war camp for captured Germans.

The family sold to the local council in 1977, and the lodge was knocked down in 1980. When the council floated a plan to build housing on part of the estate, locals threatened to handcuff themselves to the gates, and the plan was dropped. It’s run today by Newry, Mourne and Down District Council. The park is set within Rostrevor Oak Forest, a 16.6-hectare patch of ancient woodland that is a national nature reserve and special area of conservation – go early and quietly and you’ve a good chance of red squirrels, jays, and buzzards overhead; otters and water voles work the river.

Practical information

One honest change worth knowing: parking is no longer free. Until April 2024 you could drive in for nothing, but the council now charges to park – a sore point locally, since Kilbroney sits right in the middle of Rostrevor rather than out in the countryside. Walking or cycling in is still free. Households in the Newry, Mourne and Down area can get a free single-park permit or a £25 pass covering all four council parks.

Dogs are welcome on a lead but not in the play park. There’s a café (Forest and Field), toilets with showers and baby-changing, and a caravan and camping site with 52 pitches (about £23 a night with an electric hook-up, £18.50 without).

Getting there: by car from Belfast, take the A1 to Newry then the A2 coast road to the Shore Road turn-off (BT34 3AA); the lower car park sits at the foot of the forest drive, with an upper car park for the Cloughmore climb. Public transport is limited – the 37 bus between Newry and Kilkeel stops in Rostrevor village (Monday to Saturday, reduced on Sundays), leaving about a 30-minute walk to the park.