Top Things to Do in Ireland

Roll west across the midlands until the land simply stops: 214 m of shale and sandstone sheering into the Atlantic. You'll hear guillemots shriek below the viewing platform, taste salt crusting your lips, then pivot inland to the Burren's lunar limestone where orchids sprout between grikes. Finish in Galway's Latin Quarter, threading buskers and oyster shells under swags of coloured bunting.

The coach climbs through the Wicklow Gap, heather brushing the windows, before dropping into the glacier-scooped valley of Glendalough where early-morning mist still pockets the round tower. Afterward, a farmer whistles commands to border collies who streak across emerald folds, their paws drumming turf. Finish in Kilkenny's marble-flagged castle yard where the air smells of hops from the nearby Smithwick's brewery.

Smaller-group version of the blockbuster route, so you can pause at the Baby Cliffs first, smaller ledges where puffins waddle and the ocean smells of iodine and crab shell. Your guide unloads a flask of Irish coffee at the Burren's Pollnagollum cave mouth, steam fogging the air while you taste brown-sugar whiskey heat.

Board in Doolin as diesel mingles with seaweed funk. The boat thumps across the swell to Inis Mór where limestone walls quilt the ground and bike chains rattle in Atlantic drizzle. On the return the captain noses under the cliffs, guano streaks the rock like vanilla icing, and kittiwakes wheel so close you feel wing-beat spray.

Step into a 5,200-year-old passage tomb older than the Pyramids. At winter solstice a beam of low sun fingers the corbelled tunnel and lights the burial chamber like a copper kettle. Outside, the Boyne river smells of dredged silt and wild garlic while your guide retells the myth of the hero Cú Chulainn who took his name from a wolfhound here.

The coach inches along the cliff-hung N70, sheep grids clacking underneath, while Skellig Michael's shark-fin silhouette hovers on the horizon. Pause at Ladies View where purple moorgrass ripples like cat fur and the air tastes of gorse-coconut. Killarney National Park's oak woods exhale peat and last night's rain.

A smaller-coach twin that swaps Killarney coach-park chaos for a sneaky ascent of the Ballaghisheen Pass where the asphalt smells of hot pine needles. Stop in Caherciveen for a lamb-and-Gunness pie whose crust flakes onto waxed paper.