Lough Key from the Boyle side: what is free, what you pay for

Lough Key Forest and Activity Park is about 5 km east of Boyle, and to people in the town it is simply Lough Key, the place you go on a Sunday. Visitors tend to arrive with a vague idea that it is a forest with some activities, and leave surprised by how much of it is free and how much of it is not. This is the breakdown.

Who runs it, and why there is a car-park charge

The park is the old Rockingham estate, which the King family built on the shore of the lake after they left King House in Boyle. Rockingham House, designed by John Nash in 1809 and 1810, burned in 1957 and the state took over the land. Today the park is run by a management company that is a joint venture between Roscommon County Council and Coillte, and, as the general manager points out on the park's own site, it is not financially supported by either. That is the reason for the car-park fee: it pays for grass cutting, bins and trail maintenance.

What is free

• Getting in on foot or by bike. If you walk or cycle in, there is no charge at all. The 7.9 km cycleway from King House in Boyle brings you to the visitor centre.
• The grounds and the trails. The 350-hectare estate is open all year, with woodland trails graded from multi-access to strenuous, the Bog Garden, follies, bridges and canals, and about 8 km of traffic-free cycle trails suited to children.
• The visitor centre. Free to walk into.
• Picnics and barbecues. There are picnic tables across the park, and many have barbecue grills you can use for free.
• The outdoor gym and the games area. A multi-use games area for football and basketball, and outdoor gym equipment on a short loop near the visitor centre.

What you pay for

• Parking. €6 per car, paid on exit at the barrier by coin or contactless. It is free if you spend €20 or more in the park, and an annual pass costs €50. EU parking card holders park free.
• Rockingham Remembered. The heritage tour: a self-guided audio trail through two nineteenth-century servant tunnels, up the Moylurg Tower on the site of the house, and along a 300-metre canopy walk nine metres above the woods. €10 adult, €8 senior or student, €5 child, €25 family. No time limit once you are in, and no dogs.
• Boda Borg. An indoor quest house of fifteen themed quests for teams of three to five, ages seven and up. €30 adult, €27.50 child, €115 for a family of four. Book ahead.
• Zipit. Six high-wire circuits in the trees, up to twenty metres off the ground, run by Zipit Forest Adventures. Three-hour sessions from age seven; pre-booking is essential.
• Lough Key Boats. The one-hour guided cruise on the Trinity, €22 adult and €10 child, plus rowing-boat hire at €40 an hour. A family business on the lake since 1984.

When things are open

This is the part that catches people out, because the park is open all year but its attractions are not all open at the same time.

The visitor centre, café, Rockingham Remembered and Boda Borg keep the same hours. In the winter months, November to January, that is Wednesday to Sunday, ten to five, closed Monday and Tuesday, with a handful of closure days around Christmas and early January. The park publishes the current month's hours on its opening-times page and warns that they can change with the weather and with how busy it is. Last entry to Rockingham Remembered is an hour before closing, and to Boda Borg two hours before.

The boats are a summer operation. The guided tour runs daily in July and August at 13:30, 15:00 and 16:30, and at weekends in September; out of season only private speed-boat trips run, by arrangement. Zipit is booked through its own site, so check availability there.

How Boyle's side of Lough Key differs from Carrick's

If you have read about Lough Key in our Carrick-on-Shannon pages, it was as somewhere to take a hire cruiser out of Carrick, upstream and west off the Shannon. From Boyle it is a different place: a park on the edge of town that you reach through the woods, with its history in the tunnels and the tower rather than out on the water. Both are worth doing. Carrick-on-Shannon is the place to read about the cruisers; this guide is about the land.

A few things worth knowing

• There are no lifeguards and the park does not recommend swimming in the lake. Organised open-water events are a different matter.
• Dogs are welcome outdoors on a lead, but not on the Rockingham Remembered tour.
• The lift in the Moylurg Tower was out of service at the time of writing, so the viewing deck was reachable by stairs only.
• Lough Key parkrun meets on Saturday mornings at 9:30, according to the park.