Zipit Donadea: Kildare's New €1.5 Million Treetop Adventure Lands in a 700-Year-Old Forest

Kildare has a new reason to lace up its boots and look up. Zipit Donadea officially opened to the public on Friday, 3rd July 2026, bringing Ireland's newest forest adventure park to the heart of Coillte's Donadea Forest Park — a site that has been drawing visitors for reasons entirely different from ziplines for centuries.

A €1.5 Million Vote of Confidence in Kildare Tourism

The project was awarded €1.2 million in funding through Fáilte Ireland's Regenerative Tourism and Placemaking Scheme, co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Union under the EU Just Transition Fund, with Zipit Forest Adventures investing a further €300,000 of its own. That brings total investment to €1.5 million — and the projected returns are substantial. The project is estimated to generate an additional €9.3 million in economic impact over the next 15 years, supporting 20 jobs at the activity centre, with footfall expected to top 25,000 visitors in year one, growing to over 40,000 annually by 2033. It's the second regenerative tourism project to officially open in Kildare, following Emily Square, Athy in September 2025, and Fáilte Ireland CEO Caroline Bocquel has pointed to Donadea's potential to attract both domestic and international visitors while encouraging people to stay longer in the area.

Six Courses, One Forest, Every Age Welcome

Zipit Donadea is the brand's most diverse adventure park yet, combining high ropes, ziplines and giant forest nets, with something for every explorer aged 3 and up. It's the first Zipit park to offer six separate adventure courses: two high ropes courses, a junior ropes course, two zipline courses and one nets course. The ropes and zipline courses, for ages 7+ and 1.1m height minimum, pack in 55 adventure elements including 21 ziplines, reaching 11 metres into the treetops. Younger visitors get their own dedicated space too, with an innovative treetop nets experience built as a series of elevated play spaces designed specifically for them. A purpose-built visitor reception cabin, spectator seating and accessible toilet facilities round out the new infrastructure.

Sustainability was a central focus of the build. The facility operates fully off-grid, powered by Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) — a low-emission, low-noise model designed to protect the surrounding forest rather than disrupt it.

Landing in One of Kildare's Oldest Landscapes

What makes Donadea a striking choice of location is what's already there. The 243-hectare park sits on the former estate of the Aylmer family, Anglo-Norman settlers who held the land from 1550 until the death of the last family member, Caroline Aylmer, in 1935 — after which the estate passed to the state and opened to the public as a National Heritage Area in 1981. The name itself is thought to trace back to the Irish "Domnach," meaning a church founded by St Patrick, with early records of the manor dating to 1312. Visitors can already walk among the ivy-covered ruins of Donadea Castle, the old walled gardens, an ice house, a boathouse and the 19th-century Lime Tree Avenue that once formed the estate's main entrance — alongside a lake stocked with ducks and water lilies, and a limestone 9/11 memorial commemorating New York firefighter Sean Tallon, whose family emigrated from Donadea.

That existing footfall is exactly the audience Zipit is now tapping into. The park's three looped walking trails — the accessible Lake Walk, the Nature Trail and the 5.7km Aylmer Walk — already pull steady numbers of families, dog walkers and history enthusiasts, with the site sitting just 8km south of Kilcock and within easy reach of the M4. Adding a treetop adventure course to that mix doesn't compete with the heritage offering; it gives visitors a second reason to make the trip, and a reason to stay longer once they're there.

The Bigger Picture for Kildare

David O'Donnell, Commercial Director at Zipit Forest Adventures, has credited the EU Just Transition Fund with making the project possible, describing Donadea's potential to become a leading destination for visitors from Dublin, Kildare and the wider Midlands. For a county that has built its outdoor tourism reputation on quiet walks and heritage trails, Zipit Donadea adds something genuinely new — a treetop thrill layered on top of 700 years of history, without disturbing the forest that's been drawing people here since long before anyone thought to string a zipline through it.

The Bottom Line

Zipit Donadea is now open, six courses deep, off-grid, and backed by €1.5 million — landing in a National Heritage Area that already had every reason to bring visitors to Kildare, and now has one more.