Best Scenic Place in County Roscommon, Ireland - Map and Reviews

Lough Ree is one of the three great lakes of the River Shannon, stretching roughly 25 kilometres in length and up to 10 kilometres in width across the counties of Roscommon, Westmeath, and Longford in the Irish midlands. It sits at the heart of Ireland's lake district and forms one of the most significant inland water bodies on the island. The lake is a haven for wildlife, a destination for cruising and water sports, and a place where early Christian history and prehistoric archaeology are woven deeply into the landscape. Its islands alone — more than 50 of them — represent one of the richest concentrations of early medieval monastic heritage in all of Ireland, making Lough Ree far more than a scenic body of water; it is a living archive of Irish civilisation. The history of Lough Ree reaches back to ancient times. The lake and its islands were settled by early Christian monks from the sixth century onward, most famously on Hare Island (Inis Aingin) and Saints' Island, where communities flourished and produced illuminated manuscripts and religious artefacts. These monasteries were repeatedly raided by Vikings who used the Shannon as a highway into the Irish interior during the ninth and tenth centuries. Indeed, Lough Ree was one of the first inland waterways in Ireland to suffer sustained Viking incursion, with the raiders establishing a base on the lake around 844 AD. The surrounding shores were also contested during the Norman period and the subsequent centuries of conflict, and the ruins of fortified towers and castles dot the shoreline to this day. The town of Athlone, at the southern end of the lake, was the site of two significant sieges in 1690 and 1691 during the Williamite Wars, and the Shannon crossing there was considered one of the most strategically important in Ireland. The physical experience of Lough Ree is one of extraordinary openness. Standing on the shore, particularly on the western Roscommon side, one is confronted by a wide, pewter-grey expanse of water that seems almost oceanic in scale for an inland lake. The wind frequently whips across the surface, raising whitecaps and filling the air with the sound of waves breaking against reedy banks. In calmer weather the lake becomes a mirror, reflecting the great dome of the Irish sky and the low, green hills that rise gently around its edges. The water itself is relatively shallow in places and prone to sudden squalls, which have historically made navigation treacherous. In winter, mist often hangs low over the surface in the mornings, and the calls of wildfowl carry far across the water. In summer, the light on the lake can be spectacular, particularly in the long evenings when the sun sets slowly over Connacht to the west. The surrounding landscape is classic Irish midlands — flat or gently rolling drumlin country, largely agricultural, with hedgerows, small woodlands, and occasional raised bogs adding texture to the scenery. The town of Athlone is the principal urban centre at the southern end, offering good services, restaurants, and the impressive Athlone Castle, which houses a museum covering the history of the region and the Shannon. The eastern shore runs through County Westmeath, where Glassan village — sometimes called the Garden Village of Ireland — sits close to the lake and offers lovely walks and views. To the north, the town of Lanesborough/Ballyleague straddles the Shannon where it enters the lake, and there is a popular marina there. The Goldsmith Country of County Longford, associated with the poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith, lies close to the northeastern shore. Lough Ree is internationally renowned among birders and naturalists. The lake and its islands support large populations of breeding waterbirds including great crested grebes, common and Arctic terns, and significant numbers of wintering ducks and waders. The callows — seasonally flooded grasslands along the Shannon — provide feeding grounds for whooper swans, golden plover, and lapwing in winter. The lake is also a designated Special Area of Conservation and Special Protection Area under EU environmental legislation, reflecting the importance of its habitats. Otters are present along much of the shoreline, and the lake holds populations of pike, perch, bream, and roach that attract anglers from across Europe. For those arriving by water, Lough Ree is part of the Shannon–Erne Waterway system and is accessible by hire cruiser from several bases along the Shannon, including Athlone, which is the most popular starting point. Cruising the lake and pulling in to the islands for a picnic or an exploration of monastic ruins is one of the finest ways to experience it. For those travelling by road, the R362 and surrounding regional roads provide access to various points along the shore. Glassan on the eastern side and Lecarrow on the western Roscommon shore both have small marinas and slip ways for smaller craft. The lake is accessible year-round, but the sailing and cruising season typically runs from April to October. Walkers will find the western shore particularly rewarding, and the Roscommon lakeshore offers some pleasant if informal walking opportunities, though a dedicated long-distance trail fully encircling the lake does not yet exist. One of the more unusual stories associated with Lough Ree is the persistent tradition of a lake monster. In 1960, three respected priests — Father Matthew Burke, Father Daniel Murray, and Father Richard Quigly — reported seeing a large, flat-headed creature moving through the water near the southern end of the lake. The account was taken seriously enough to be reported in national newspapers and has since become part of local folklore, with the creature dubbed "Peiste" after the Irish word for a water serpent or lake monster. The story is recalled with a mixture of affection and bemusement by locals, but it adds another layer of mystery to a lake that already feels timeless and slightly otherworldly, especially on a grey autumn morning when the mist refuses to lift and the islands dissolve into the distance.

Lough Key Forest Park is one of Ireland's most celebrated woodland parklands, set on the southern shores of Lough Key in County Roscommon. Managed by Coillte, the Irish forestry company, it encompasses roughly 800 acres of mixed woodland, open water, bog garden, and parkland that together create a rich and varied natural environment. The park draws visitors from across Ireland and abroad, offering an unusually complete package of natural beauty, heritage interest, adventure activities, and tranquil walking that few comparable sites in the country can match. Its combination of a great shimmering lake scattered with wooded islands, a dramatic ruined castle, and towering conifers and broadleaves makes it one of the most photogenic places in the Irish midlands. The land at Lough Key has a long and layered history. In medieval times the area was closely associated with the MacDermot family, who built a castle on Castle Island, one of the lake's small islands, and used Lough Key as the territorial heart of their kingdom in north Roscommon. The lake itself appears in early Irish annals and was a site of considerable strategic and cultural importance. Rock Castle, a later structure whose ruins still stand in the park, was built by the King family, who acquired the estate in the eighteenth century and developed it into a formal demesne with fine gardens, a walled garden, and pleasure grounds. The King family connection gives the park much of its designed landscape character, and their influence can be felt in the mature specimen trees that line many of the paths and the elegant parkland layouts that survive today. One of the most romantic stories associated with Lough Key concerns the poet Thomas Moore, who visited in the early nineteenth century and is said to have been moved by the tragic love story of Una MacDermot and Tomás Costello, who are buried on Trinity Island in the lake. Moore drew on this legend when he wrote his famous song "The Young May Moon" and, more directly, "Oh! Doubt Me Not," linking the lake forever to the Irish Romantic literary tradition. The island graves and their story lend a melancholy, poetic atmosphere to the lake that still feels palpable when the water is still and the light is low. Physically, the park is a place of extraordinary sensory richness. The woodland is a mixture of tall Scots pine, Norway spruce, and larch interspersed with native oak, ash, and birch, creating a shifting canopy that filters light differently depending on the season. In spring the floor is carpeted with wild garlic and bluebells; in autumn the broadleaved sections turn amber and gold while the conifers remain a dark, constant green. The smell of pine resin on warm days is pervasive and intoxicating. The lake is never far from view, and the sound of water — whether as gentle lapping on the shore or the splash of waterfowl taking flight — accompanies almost every walk through the park. The bog garden, one of the park's quieter corners, has a hushed, primordial quality, its mosses and bog cotton giving way to reflective dark pools. The park contains Rockingham House, or rather its dramatic basement shell — the main house was destroyed by fire in 1957, leaving only the underground tunnel system and service areas, which visitors can still explore today. This underground passage system, originally used by servants to move unseen between the house and outbuildings, is now one of the park's most intriguing features, offering a genuinely atmospheric walk through vaulted stone corridors. The walled garden has been partially restored and is a peaceful enclave of structured planting within the wider wild landscape. For active visitors the park offers a treetop walkway called the Treetop Walk (or Moylurg Tower area), which gives elevated views across the canopy toward the lake and islands. There is also the Tree Zone adventure play area, extensive cycling trails, and rowing boats available for hire on the lake, allowing visitors to reach some of the islands and see the ruined castle up close from the water. Anglers are drawn here by the lake's reputation for pike, perch, and bream, and the lakeshore provides several designated fishing stands. Birdwatchers will find the park rewarding throughout the year, with great crested grebes, kingfishers, herons, and various duck species commonly seen on and around the water. The park sits just outside the town of Boyle, which is approximately three kilometres to the southwest. Boyle itself is a pleasant market town with a superb Cistercian abbey, Boyle Abbey, which is one of the best-preserved medieval abbey ruins in Ireland and well worth combining with a visit to the park. The wider county of Roscommon offers Strokestown Park House, Roscommon Castle, and the beautiful landscapes of the Shannon-Erne waterway system. The park is positioned in the Northern Midlands, a region that remains less visited by international tourists than the west coast, giving it a genuine sense of undiscovered quiet even in summer. Access to Lough Key Forest Park is straightforward. It lies directly off the N4 Dublin-to-Sligo national road, making it accessible from Dublin in under two hours and from Sligo in about forty minutes. There is a large car park at the entrance and an entry fee is charged per vehicle. The park is open year-round, though some of the activity facilities are seasonal. Summer brings the most activity and the fullest range of facilities, but autumn is arguably the most beautiful time to visit, when the deciduous trees colour dramatically against the dark water of the lake. Spring, with its wildflowers and birdsong, is also exceptional. The park has a café, a visitor centre, and accessible paths for those with mobility considerations, though some of the more adventurous trails require sturdier footwear. A detail that surprises many visitors is the sheer number of islands in Lough Key — there are around thirty in total — each with its own character, history, or legend. Some are little more than a clump of trees and rock; others, like Trinity Island with its ruined priory and the graves of the ill-fated lovers, carry centuries of human story within their small perimeters. When the lake is glassy in the early morning and mist hangs between the islands, the scene has an almost mythological quality that makes it easy to understand why this particular body of water attracted so many stories, so many poets, and so many noble families across the centuries.

Lough Key is a stunning freshwater lake situated in County Roscommon in the west of Ireland, lying just to the east of the town of Boyle. It is one of the most picturesque loughs in Ireland, covering approximately 350 hectares and dotted with around thirty small islands, many of which are wooded and contribute to the lake's remarkably romantic, almost fairy-tale character. The lake and its surrounding forest park make it one of the most popular natural amenities in the northwest of Ireland, drawing visitors who come for walking, cycling, boating, and simply absorbing the extraordinary beauty of the landscape. The centrepiece of the experience for many visitors is Lough Key Forest and Activity Park, a managed estate that wraps around the lake's southern shore and provides infrastructure for outdoor recreation while preserving the area's ecological and historical richness. The history of Lough Key stretches back many centuries and is deeply intertwined with the story of Irish monasticism and Gaelic lordship. Trinity Island, one of the lake's larger islands, was home to a Premonstratensian abbey founded in the twelfth century, and the ruins that remain give an atmospheric hint of the religious life once conducted on these waters. The lake and surrounding territory were historically associated with the MacDermot clan, who were powerful Gaelic lords of Moylurg and maintained a castle on Rock Island, sometimes called Castle Island, which sits prominently in the water near the shore. This castle became the backdrop for one of the most poignant love stories in Irish literary tradition: the tale of Una MacDermot and Tomás Costello, sometimes called the Irish Romeo and Juliet. Una, forbidden by her father from marrying Tomás, died of a broken heart, and when Tomás came to mourn at her grave on Trinity Island and lay down beside her, two trees reportedly grew from their graves and intertwined overhead — a story that has been retold in Irish poetry and song for generations. The landscape around Lough Key is one of exceptional natural beauty, shaped by glaciation and richly mantled in broadleaf and conifer forest. The forest park itself contains oak, ash, beech, and a variety of conifers, and the woodland paths wind between towering trees with filtered light creating an atmosphere of peaceful seclusion. In autumn the whole area blazes with colour, making it one of the finest seasonal spectacles in Connacht. The lake surface itself is typically calm and reflective, mirroring the wooded islands and the frequently dramatic Irish sky above. Birdsong fills the air — great tits, robins, woodpigeons, and occasionally the flash of a kingfisher near the water's edge. The smell of damp leaf litter, moss, and lake water mingles to produce that particularly Irish sensory experience of a wet woodland by still water. The broader surrounding area speaks volumes about the depth of history in this part of Connacht. The town of Boyle lies barely two kilometres to the west and is home to Boyle Abbey, one of the finest surviving Cistercian ruins in Ireland, founded in the twelfth century. The ruins are impressively preserved and managed by the Office of Public Works, with remarkable Romanesque and early Gothic stonework. Roscommon itself is a county replete with ancient sites, including Rathcroghan near Tulsk, the mythological seat of the kings of Connacht and one of the most significant unexcavated archaeological complexes in Europe. The wider landscape is one of rolling drumlin countryside, small farms, bogs, and river meadows, with the River Boyle connecting the lake to Lough Gara further upstream and ultimately draining into the Shannon system to the south. Visiting Lough Key Forest and Activity Park is straightforward and well catered for. The park is accessible from the N4 Dublin to Sligo road, which passes close by and makes it reachable by car in roughly two and a half hours from Dublin. There is a car park with an admission fee for vehicles entering the forest park, and the facilities include a café, toilet blocks, children's play areas, a treetop walk, a bog garden, a wishing chair, and boat hire in the warmer months. Cycling trails and walking routes of varying lengths wind through the estate, and the full loop around the accessible shore areas gives a satisfying half-day outing. The park is open year-round, though some activities and boat hire are seasonal. Summer months are naturally busiest, but spring and autumn visits are particularly rewarding for those who prefer quieter paths and dramatic natural colour. One of the more unusual features of the park is the Moylurg Tower, a nineteenth-century folly built on a high point within the estate, which offers panoramic views over the lake and its islands on a clear day and provides a tangible link to the era when the surrounding land formed part of the Rockingham Estate. The estate was owned by the King family, later the Kings-Harman family, Anglo-Irish landlords who built Rockingham House on the lakeside in the early nineteenth century to designs attributed to John Nash. The house burned down in 1957 after a period of decline, and its basement and underground passages — through which servants once moved invisibly beneath the formal life of the great house — can still be explored by visitors today, a genuinely eerie and fascinating remnant of the Ascendancy era hidden beneath the forest floor.