Hope Castle Castleblayney
Castleblayney town centre, which has many pubs and restaurants, is less than a mile distant. If the weather is dry and it is still light (or you have a good torch), there is a 12 minute lakeside walk into the town from the White Hill.
The town has a thriving music scene. The Glencarn Hotel (glencarnhotel.ie) hosts regular band nights and music events. Several pubs and bars provide live entertainment including The Horsemans Inn (Main St), The Old Coach Inn a.k.a Watters (York St), The Comet Bar (Main St) and The Spinning Wheel (Main St). Many Concerts, plays and live music sessions are performed through the year at the Íontas Arts & Community Resource Centre.
The White Hill backs onto the vast Lough Muckno, which is by far the largest lake in Co. Monaghan, and its Country Park of 900 acres which includes the forest trails of the Black Islands, diverse wildlife, acclaimed angling and the extensive range of water sports.
Looking out across Lough Muckno from top of Whitehill
Lough Muckno is renowned for coarse fishing. There are hundreds of pegs available and the lake has huge stocks of fish including bream, rudd, roach, hybrids, tench, perch and pike.
For an overview of the main fishing points around the Lake and the smaller lakes in Castleblayney, see www.fishinginireland.info/coarse/east/monaghan/castleblaney.htm.
Active Irish Angling
Muckno also hosts 6 annual fishing festivals and championships. There are many other lakes nearby, Gas Lake, Mill Town Lough, Smith’s to name a few with both pike fishing and coarse fishing
In addition to the walks around Muckno Country Park, the 56 Km Monaghan Way passes the White Hill – see www.irishtrails.ie/Trail/Monaghan-Way/24/
The house is just a 500 metre walk from the Lough Muckno Waterski and WaterBoard Club – see
www.skimuckno.com/. Canoeing is also available on the Lough – see http://www.celticcanoes.ie/lough-muckno/
As well as the 18 hole championship Concra Wood Golf Course (www.concrawood.ie), which is on the doorstep, there are other accessible 18 hole courses at Mannan Castle, the Nuremore Hotel and at Rossmore Golf Club .
Bowling and other indoor activities can be found at the at GR8 complex in the town (see www.gr8entertainment.ie), while Irish Country Quads at nearby Inishkeen provide quad bike riding, archery, clay pigeon shooting and other outdoor sports – see www.irishcountryquads.com.
Concra Wood Golf and Country Club
There is also a visitor centre devoted to the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh at Inishkeen –
www.patrickkavanaghcountry.com
Further afield , to the North West you will find the historic county town of Monaghan and the scenic village of Glaslough which includes the Castle Leslie estate. Directly to the East, there is Dundalk, the seaside villages of Blackrock, Carlingford and the Cooley Mountains.
To the North East there is the town of Newry which lies between the Ring of Gullion and the Mourne Mountains.
For those staying for several days, a sight seeing or shopping day trip to Dublin or Belfast is both feasible and straightforward either using Bus Eireann express coaches – see www.buseireann.ie or catching an early express train from Dundalk Irish Rail
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