Ireland Discovery Guide

Ireland is small, green and easy to travel, and its appeal is less about individual monuments than about the combination of landscape, conversation and music that turns up in places you did not plan to stop.

The west coast is the draw: the Cliffs of Moher, the limestone pavement of the Burren, the Dingle and Beara peninsulas, Connemara, and the road along the Wild Atlantic Way that links them for two and a half thousand kilometres. Offshore, the Aran Islands and Skellig Michael sit in the ocean with monastic remains on them.

The prehistory is older than most visitors expect — the passage tomb at Newgrange predates the pyramids — and the literary record is out of all proportion to the population: four Nobel laureates, Joyce, and a pub culture in which traditional music is played by people for each other rather than for an audience. It is also, genuinely, one of the friendlier countries in Europe.

If you have a week

Two nights in Dublin, then west: Galway and the Burren, the Dingle peninsula, and back through Cork. That is the classic loop and it works. Add Newgrange on the way out of Dublin if you can book it.

If you want the coast

The Wild Atlantic Way runs from Donegal to Cork, and no one drives all of it. Pick a section: Donegal for emptiness and the Slieve League cliffs, Connemara for the mountains and the Irish-speaking districts, or the Beara peninsula, which is quieter than the Ring of Kerry beside it.

If you came for the music

Sessions happen in pubs in Doolin, Dingle, Galway, Miltown Malbay and Sligo. They are not performances — musicians sit in a corner playing for each other — and the etiquette is to listen, buy a round and not talk over the slow airs.

If you want the prehistory

Brú na Bóinne for the passage tombs, the Hill of Tara, the stone forts of the Aran Islands, and the monastic sites at Glendalough and Clonmacnoise. None is crowded outside high summer.

Ireland spent most of its recorded history being governed from somewhere else and the last thirty years changing faster than almost any country in Europe. Both facts are visible in how people talk about the place.

Talk as a skill

Conversation is a competence here, and the craic — the quality of an evening’s company — is a genuine measure. Strangers will talk to you in shops and on trains. Self-deprecation is expected and boastfulness lands badly; slagging, which is affectionate insult, is a sign of acceptance rather than hostility.

The diaspora

Around seventy million people worldwide claim Irish descent against a resident population of five million, the legacy of famine and a century of emigration afterwards. Most Irish families have relatives abroad, and the relationship with those countries runs deep.

The Church, and its retreat

Catholicism ran the schools and hospitals into the 1980s and its authority collapsed quickly after the abuse revelations. The same country voted for divorce in 1995, same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018, each by referendum.

The language question

Irish is the first official language and the everyday language of a small minority in the Gaeltacht areas. Everyone learns it at school, most cannot speak it fluently, and almost everyone has an opinion about why.

• East Ireland
• North Lakelands
• Southwest Ireland
• West Ireland

The pressure points are specific and severe in summer: the Cliffs of Moher, the Ring of Kerry, Killarney and parts of Dingle. Going in May, June or September, starting early, and driving the Ring of Kerry anticlockwise — the opposite of the coaches — solves most of it.

Skellig Michael takes a strictly limited number of visitors a day on licensed boats, weather permitting, and books out months ahead. Do not try to work around the limit; the site is fragile and the landing is genuinely dangerous.

Farmland is private. Ireland has no general right to roam, and much of the countryside you will want to walk across belongs to someone. Use waymarked ways and rights of way, close gates, and ask if you are unsure.

Spend in the villages rather than only in Dublin, which absorbs a disproportionate share of visitor money. Live music in a small-town pub, a B&B rather than a chain, and an Irish-owned tour all make a measurable difference in places that need it.

May, June and September are the best months: the longest days — light until half past ten in June — the driest weather Ireland manages, and fewer people than the peak.

July and August are the busiest and most expensive, with the west coast and Kerry full, though the weather is no better than June and often worse. Book accommodation well ahead.

March brings St Patrick’s Day and a festival in Dublin around it. October is quiet and often pleasant, with the Cork Jazz Festival and Halloween, which began here as Samhain.

November to February is dark, wet and windy, with sunset before half past four in December. Rural attractions and some island ferries close, but the cities are cheap, the pubs are at their best and the countryside is empty.

The real point about Irish weather is that it is changeable rather than bad: four seasons in a day is a cliche because it is accurate.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the country

Ireland is expensive, and Dublin accommodation is the worst of it — the city has a genuine shortage and prices reflect it. Booking early matters more here than in most of Europe.