Cairn Wood/ Ballysallagh
The wood offers a choice of 3 walks from the car park through the mixed woodland. A popular site for local dog walkers.
County Down
Distance 1.3 miles
OS Map Sheet 15
Terrain Easy walking on forest tracks
Nearest Town Holywood
Route Shape Circular
Grid Reference J448775
Route Type Forest, Woodland
From the car park follow the waymarkers (choice of 3 routes) through the forest and woodland. The walking on forest roads (unsurfaced) is steep in places.
Rising to an altitude of 200m the woodland was once an outlier of the Clandeboye Estate and is important locally not only for its conservation value but also as a landscape feature in North Down.
The tree cover in the Forest Nature Reserve is mainly beech, with some oak, birch, alder, rowan and holly many of which are of scrub character. A few conifers occur, mostly Scots pine.
Open areas are predominantly grass/rush complex with bramble and at the highest elevations there is heathland with bilberry growing extensively.
There is a wide range of small song birds and many of the more common raptors frequent the area. Red squirrels are resident in the forest and may be seen in the wooded areas near the adjacent hill fort.
These walks are situated in a working forest environment and may be subject to diversion and closure from time to time.
Up to date information is available on the Forest Service web site.
Permanent orienteering course, conservation woodland with native broadleaves, red squirrels resident
From Holywood: Take the Church Road to its junction with B170. Turn left onto the Ballymiscaw Road. At the end of the road turn right onto Whinney Hill. At the next junction turn left onto Craigantlet Road for approximately 0.75 mile to the forest car park.
Translink – journeyplanner.translink.co.uk
Dogs must be kept under control and should not be allowed to foul on footpaths. Please use the dog foul bins provided at the trail head.
Car parking and picnic facilities
Comments will be reviewed and those that cause offence will be removed. This is at the discretion of WalkNI.
We want everyone to be able to enjoy the walking routes listed on WalkNI safely and easily.
If you have come across any problems whilst walking a route, please let us so we can pass on any issues to the appropriate management body responsible for maintaining the walk.
Walk Route
Cairn Wood/ Ballysallagh
Well set out. Nice mixture of deciduous and conifer woodland. Clean pathway and a nice mixture of trails.
Only complaint is it appears to be very prone to dalkwalkers filling wee black plastic bags with excrement, and leaving them tied onto low hanging branches. The whole route was festooned with these grim Christmas tree decorations. I’ll never understand the mentality of people who do it.