Geopark Trails
There are a number of well-established walking routes and trails throughout the Mourne Gullion Strangford UNESCO Global Geopark. These include the Mourne Way, Ring of Gullion Way, Lecale Way and the Mourne Coastal Route.
Geopark Trails
Try one of our Self-Guided Geological trails to better understand the rocks beneath your feet. These illustrated documents explain some of our most interesting sites so that you can impress your family and friends with some geological knowledge. Millennia of weathering and erosion, along with glacial activity sculpted the Mourne Mountains’ distinctive rounded peaks and u-shaped valleys, giving us the dramatic profile we see today.
Gullion Geological Trail
The mountain is encircled by the Slieve Gullion Ring Dyke, a 60 million year old structure with a diameter of 11km. You will see the ring dyke clearly if you climb to the summit or by driving around the mountain drive. Geologically Slieve Gullion and the encircling ‘ring dyke’ hills are considered to be the best example of a volcanic ring dyke system in the UK or Ireland. The complex attracts international research interest and has made contributions of world significance to scientific understanding of volcanicity.
Gullion Geological Trail
DownloadMournes Geological Trail – Bloody Bridge
The valley at Bloody Bridge is too large to have been made by the present day river. As with most of the Mournes it was ice that excavated this valley,silt stone is well exposed in the river bed at the Bloody Bridge and as blocks on the path. The rounded hills in the distance are formed of granite. Granite is a hard igneous rock, and erodes more slowly than silt stone. This the reason we have the beautiful Mourne Mountains.
Mourne Bloody Bridge Geological Trail
DownloadStrangford Geological Trail
The area we now know as Strangford and Lecale once lay deep in the southern hemisphere, drowned beneath the wide and deep Iapetus Ocean. On the ocean floor sands and muds accumulated and eventually, under their own weight, were compressed into the sandstones and mudstones that we see today. Remains of the sea creatures became buried too, trapped as fossils.
Strangford Geological Trail
DownloadOur partners in Outdoor Recreation NI maintain a vast collection of walking trails on Outmore NI where you can discover hundreds outdoor trails and places to visit in Northern Ireland.
Whether you’re interested in walking, cycling, mountain biking or canoeing, OutmoreNI has hundreds of trails for you to enjoy. Check out some of our top picks in Mourne Gullion Strangford: Slieve Gullion, Cloughmore Trail via Fiddler’s Green or Delamont Long Walk.