Glenullin Bog rests comfortably centre stage in an amphitheatre formed by the north-eastern extremity of the Sperrin mountains. To stand on the middle of its great dome provides confirmation of the status of this raised bog as the centre piece of the Glenullin river valley; an emphatic impression of the integrity of the Glenullin valley as a landscape unit is gained.

The words of Seamus Heaney in his poem Boglands give a fitting description of this experience.

“We have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening. Everywhere the eye concedes to encroaching horizon”

This distant horizon at Glenullin is formed by an arc of mountain shapes: Craigore (‘crag of the goats’) to the north-west; Benbradagh (‘peak of the thieves’) to the west; Craigmore (‘the big crag’) and Moneyoran (‘the brake of the cold spring’) to the south – mountains that were named by a people living close to a harsh landscape in which they eked out a living.

The near horizon is formed by the flat line that forms the raised dome that is Glenullin Bog. Few bogs in Europe today provide the opportunity to turn around full circle and continue this ‘bog-horizon’ – few remain sufficiently intact. Even now with deep drains cutting through the body of the bog and the original vegetation scoured from the surface Glenullin remains (in an aesthetic sense) a raised bog.

Glenullin Bog presents the strongest case for conservation of a raised bog in Northern Ireland in terms of its’ contribution to the scenic value of a unique landscape. It is a landscape which contains the constituent parts of a jigsaw which, put together, illustrate most of the geomorphological, ecological and cultural history of the whole island. The place of the bog in this jigsaw is a vital part of the complete picture; its’ conservation value cannot be emphasised enough.