Sit in the walled butterfly garden on a warm still day and count the species

Walk the shrub gardens and the lake in the old demesne

Walk the forest trails around the grounds

Find what is left of the manor house itself

Drum Manor is a quiet old estate outside Cookstown where the house is largely gone and the grounds remain — and inside one of the walled gardens they have planted specifically for butterflies, so on a warm still day in summer the enclosure fills with them. There are shrub gardens, a lake, and forest walks around it. It is a small place and it does one thing very well.

Drum Manor: The Butterfly Garden Near Cookstown

Take the guided tour and stand in the mill when the beetling engines are running

See the water wheel on the Ballinderry River that drives the whole thing

Find out what beetling actually did to linen and why it mattered

Beetling was the last stage of making linen: the woven cloth was pounded by rows of heavy wooden hammers to close the weave and beat a sheen into it, and the noise was deafening. Hugh Faulkner and his brother set up a bleaching works on the Ballinderry River near Cookstown in 1764, and the water-powered mill that grew out of it is the last functioning beetling mill in the United Kingdom. The National Trust runs it, and they still start the engine.

Wellbrook: The Last Working Beetling Mill in the UK

Walk up to Tullyhogue Fort and into the ring of earthen banks on the hilltop

Find where the inauguration stone stood, outside the ring of banks rather than within it

Look out over the country the O'Neills ruled from this hill

Pair it with the Hill of The O'Neill at Dungannon to see both ends of the same power

Three kilometres south of Cookstown, on a low hill ringed by earthen banks and old trees, the kings of Tír Eoghain were inaugurated — not crowned in a cathedral but made king on open ground, in the Gaelic way, on the hill the Irish call Tulach Óg. The O'Neills were made here for centuries, the last of them Hugh O'Neill in 1595; Mountjoy's men smashed the inauguration stone, Leac na Rí, in 1602, and the Flight of the Earls five years later ended the Gaelic order in Ulster altogether. There is no building left. That is rather the point: what mattered was the hill, the ceremony and the people standing on it.

Tullyhogue: Where the O'Neills Were Crowned

Walk the circles, alignments and cairns laid out across the cut bog

Find Bradley's Cairn, the round cairn with standing stones set into it

Follow one of the stone alignments and work out what it points at

Look at the peat face around the site and consider how much is still buried

George Barnett was cutting turf on the south-east edge of the Sperrins in the late 1930s when he started uncovering stones — 1,269 of them in the end. Beaghmore is a complex of seven low stone circles — six of them paired — with twelve cairns and ten stone rows that had been swallowed by blanket bog and preserved under it, excavated between 1945 and 1949 and taken into state care. The peat that buried it is the reason it survived, and there is almost certainly more of it still under the bog.

Beaghmore: Seven Stone Circles Under the Peat

Climb the Hill of The O'Neill and pick out how many of Ulster's nine counties you can see — seven of them are in view on a clear day

Find out how the Flight of the Earls in 1607 ended the Gaelic order in Ulster

Go through the Ranfurly House arts and visitor centre at the foot of the hill

Work out why a hill with this view was worth ruling a province from

The O'Neills ruled Ulster from this hill at Dungannon, and from it seven of the nine counties of Ulster are clearly visible from it — which is exactly why they chose it. Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, held out against the English crown from here, and when he and Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, sailed from Rathmullan for Catholic Europe in September 1607, the old Gaelic order went with them — their lands were escheated and settled by Protestants from Britain in the Plantation of Ulster. The site now has a viewing platform on the summit.

The Hill of The O'Neill: Where Ulster Was Ruled

Find the high cross on its hillock at the western shore of Lough Neagh

Read the carved scriptural panels on all four faces of the cross

Look out over Lough Neagh, the largest lake in Ireland and Britain, from beside the cross

Find out about the magic cow the place is named for

Ard Bó means high cow, and the name comes from a legend that the monastery here was built with mortar mixed from the milk of a magic cow that came up out of Lough Neagh. St Colman of Ardboe founded it in the 6th century, and the only thing left of it is the high cross — 9th or 10th century, standing on a small hillock right at the western shore of the lough, and one of the finest examples of the Irish high cross anywhere in Ulster.

Ardboe: The High Cross Built From a Magic Cow's Milk

Climb Sawel from the Glenelly Road, following the fences over the bog

Walk the ridge from Sawel to Dart, the second-highest summit in the Sperrins

On a clear day, pick out the Foyle estuary, Lough Neagh and the Mournes from the top

Drive the Glenelly valley under the mountain

Sawel, at 678 metres, is the highest of the Sperrin Mountains and the highest mountain in Northern Ireland outside the Mournes; its summit is on the county boundary, with Londonderry to the north and Tyrone to the south. Dart, at 619 metres the second highest in the range, is along the ridge to the west. The Sperrins are an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, mostly moorland and blanket bog under rounded summits, and the usual loop goes up from the Glenelly Road, following wire fences that make a navigation line in any weather. On a clear day you can see north to the Foyle estuary and east across Northern Ireland to Lough Neagh and the Mournes. Golden eagles from the reintroduced Donegal population have been seen across the range.

Sawel and Dart: The Top of the Sperrins

Walk the gorge path where the Roe is forced through the narrows at the visitor centre

Find the disused hydroelectric station, the first in Northern Ireland, built in 1896

Find the flax drying fields and the watch towers built to stop linen being stolen

Go through the Green Lane Museum on the linen industry and rural life

The Roe runs south-west of Limavady through three miles of steep-sided gorge and riparian woodland, and the whole valley is a record of industry using water. The 18th-century linen industry worked this site — flax drying fields with watch towers to stop the linen being stolen, derelict buildings, and a waterwheel that drove the machinery. Beside it stands a disused hydroelectric generating station, the first to operate in Northern Ireland, from 1896.