Ards Forest Park

Today, the forest park is approximately 480 hectares in area and contains a range of wildlife and plants, as well as the remains of four ringforts and a number of megalithic tombs. According to legend, these tombs were the beds of Diarmuid and Gráinne in their flight from Fionn Mac Cumhaill.^{[citation needed]}

The forest park has a number of signposted walks which pass the main features of the park. These include the Ards Heritage Trail, which is around 3.5 km long, the Nature Trail and the Green Trail, which are both approximately 3 km long, and the Red Trail, which is 13 km long, though this walk does give provisions for a short-cut back to the starting point should it be needed. There are several viewing points on these trails.^{[citation needed]}

The Ards Heritage Trail passes a well called the Ague Well. This reputed holy well is associated with a number of stories of remedial powers. Also nearby is a Mass rock where mass was celebrated in defiance of the Penal Laws.^{[citation needed]}

The forest park also has a picnic and children's play area and a snack outlet.^{[citation needed]}

Just outside the forest park, at Ballymore on its northern border, is Clondehorky parish church, a Church of Ireland church built in the Georgian style in the mid-18th-century. This church may have been designed by Micheal Priestly. Directly opposite the church's main gate is Ballymore Arch, built for the Stewart family in the 19th-century to improve access from the church to Ards House, which was several miles distant at the edge of the small Ards Peninsula.^{[citation needed]}

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ards Forest Park.

• Coillte webpage
• Creeslough Home Page
• Saint John's Church (Clondahorky)

55°09′11″N 7°54′21″W / 55.15314°N 7.90587°W / 55.15314; -7.90587