Coillte National Forest Park


Gougane Barra is Ireland’s first national park and was opened in 1964 and is a short walk from our Cork hotel. Bring your boots, organize a picnic and go explore.
The forest park covers approximately 142 hectares of the valley floor and was planted in 1938 with lodgepole pine, sitka spruce and Japanese larch which are interspersed with quiet walking trails and picnic tables.

If you want to take the car, there is a €5 car entrance fee to the park but it is well worth it. Drive in and take the loop road around the forest park and park in one of two small car parks. This will help you decide which trails you would like to follow or where you would like to sit and have your picnic or just relax and enjoy the nature. There are many walking trails and some of the most popular include ‘Slí Laoi’ which follows the infant river Lee from the lower car park to the head of the great coom – a distance of about 1.5 km. Another trail, called ‘Slí an Éasa’ has a magnificent waterfall and a great viewing point when you get to the top. All the trails are different and worth the walk.

The park has an abundance of natural vegetation with grasses such as brents and fescues, heather and ling on the drier slopes and a large collection of purple moor grasses, bog mosses and cotton grasses on the moist slopes and wet hollows. Sedges and rushes flourish well here as do fox’s cabbage, butterworths and sundews.

The valley is full of wildlife, including deer, badgers, foxes, stoats and even the shy pine marten can be spotted here. There is a large variety of bird species such as willow warblers, fire crests, robins, thrushes and wagtails in the lower valley, while the great ravens, peregrine falcons and now the white tailed sea eagle, guard the rocky crags above. In the wetlands and lake, you will find cormorants, herons, grebes, ducks, and moorhens.