Donadea Forest Park – Meetmums Places

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Maybe you’ve been to Donadea Forest Park or at least heard of it? Do you know someone who’s visited it?

I have to be honest: only some months ago I heard of it for the first time. We’re always looking for new places to visit, and we love Irish Forest Parks and being in close contact with nature, so I do not know how we had missed this hidden gem for so long!

Last winter, some friends of ours, told us about the park. We do trust their opinion very much, so we went to visit it.

The park is located just outside Co. Dublin, in northwest Co. Kildare, but only 30 kms – a half an hour drive – from Dublin city. The perfect place to spend the day with the kids!

It has an approximate area of 640 acres (2.6km2).

Just a little bit of history: In the 1800s the Donadea estates were one of the largest in Co. Kildare, amounting to almost 16,000 acres. They belonged to the Aylmer family. Time went by and the estate reduced in size for different historical reasons. The last Aylmer to live at Donadea castle was Caroline Maria Aylmer; when she died in 1935, she left the estate to the Church of Ireland, who in turn passed it on to the Irish state. In 1981, Paddy Power T.D. for Kildare and Minister for Fisheries and Forestry opened Donadea Demesne to the public (Info extracted from www.abandonedireland.com).

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The park has lots of attractive areas to visit, like the castle, the lake, hundreds of little and big paths to follow inside the woodland (60% broadleaf and 40% Norwegian conifer) and the 9/11 memorial: a big plot of native oak that was planted in memory of all those who lost their lives at ground zero on Sep 11th, 2001. One of those victims was Sean Tallon, whose family is from Donadea.

If you get tired of walking, you can take a break and relax having a nice and hot cup of coffee in their café, which has an outside area for the kids!

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How charming is this cafe? We are definitely visiting in December

We loved the park! It is true that we were lucky and the weather remained dry during the day we visited… but we loved absolutely everything we saw there.

If you have the chance, go and visit…and when you’re back, write a little comment to the post and let us know if you liked it Image may be NSFW.
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DON’T GET LOST!: Donadea is located 8kms south of Kilcock on R407 to Naas. Here are some instructions that you should read before leaving (location map, opening times, etc).

© Laura Guerrero