The best view in Fermanagh, delivered by road
Lough Navar sits at the heart of what is reckoned to be the largest continuous stretch of forest in Northern Ireland — thousands of hectares of conifer, bog, heath and native woodland spilling across the high ground west of Enniskillen. Its northern edge falls away suddenly at the Cliffs of Magho, a limestone escarpment that geologists reckon runs for miles along the skyline above the water. Stand at the top and the whole of Lower Lough Erne opens out below you, its wooded islands scattered across the silver water, the fields of three counties rolling away into the distance.
What makes it special is how easily you reach it. Rather than a hard hillwalk, a seven-mile forest drive carries you almost the whole way up, winding through the trees past picnic pull-ins and glimpses of open bog, until a short walk from the car park delivers you to the very edge of the view. It's a rare thing — a genuinely great view that a toddler, a grandparent or a tired pair of legs can all reach on the same afternoon.
The forest is more than its famous outlook, though. Marked trails thread deeper into the woods, one of them out to the Blackslee waterfall where a stream tumbles over sandstone rock. Across the high ground lies wild blanket bog — the kind of soft, wet ground where bog cotton nods and tiny carnivorous sundews grow — and the whole area now sits within the Cuilcagh Lakelands UNESCO Global Geopark, protected for its geology, its wildlife and its wide, quiet beauty. Come for the view; stay for the forest.