Ireland

Achill Island, connected to the County Mayo mainland by a bridge, is the largest island off the coast of Ireland and one of its most dramatically scenic — a landscape of high sea cliffs, blanket bog, and beaches that would look at home on a much sunnier coastline were it not for the Atlantic weather. Keem Bay, a horseshoe of golden sand tucked beneath towering cliffs at the island's western tip, is regularly ranked among Ireland's best beaches, while Croaghaun on Achill Head is one of Europe's highest sea cliffs, even taller than those at Moher though far less visited. The island also carries a heavier history: the abandoned Deserted Village at the base of Slievemore, a cluster of roughly 100 stone cottages left empty after the Famine era, is a haunting reminder of the mass emigration that shaped this part of Ireland. Achill is popular for surfing, diving, and the Atlantic Drive, a coastal road looping much of the island's southern shore, and its relative remoteness compared to the Ring of Kerry or Cliffs of Moher gives it a quieter, more genuinely local feel.

Adare is regularly called Ireland's prettiest village, and it's easy to see why: a single main street lined with thatched cottages, many now boutiques, cafes, and craft shops, set against the backdrop of medieval ruins and the grand Adare Manor estate. Much of its picture-postcard look dates to the 1830s, when the Earl of Dunraven rebuilt the village in the Tudor-revival style still visible today. Within walking distance are three medieval friaries and a 13th-century castle ruin along the River Maigue, remnants of Adare's importance long before its thatched-cottage makeover, while Adare Manor itself — now a five-star hotel and golf resort that has hosted the Ryder Cup — anchors one end of the village with parkland and a neo-Gothic mansion. It's a compact, walkable place best enjoyed slowly: a coffee, a wander past the cottages, and a look at the friary ruins covers it well, making it a natural stop between Limerick and Killarney rather than a multi-day destination.

Aran Islands: The Aran Islands — Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer — sit at the mouth of Galway Bay, three limestone islands that feel like an extension of the Burren rising from the sea, and where Irish remains the everyday language of daily life in a way few other places in the country can claim. Inishmore, the largest, is home to Dún Aonghasa, a prehistoric stone fort perched dramatically on a sheer cliff edge, its origins and purpose still debated by archaeologists but its setting undeniably one of the most striking in Ireland. Life on the islands is still shaped by stone: dry-stone walls divide almost every field, and traditional currach boats and Aran jumpers (the genuine, hand-knitted originals, not the tourist-shop versions) trace back to a fishing and farming culture that has adapted rather than vanished. Bikes are the classic way to explore Inishmore's network of quiet lanes past ancient forts, churches, and holy wells; the smaller islands, Inishmaan and Inisheer, see far fewer visitors and offer an even quieter, more traditional glimpse of island life.

Ballycotton is a small, working fishing village perched on cliffs above a sheltered harbour on the East Cork coast, its brightly painted houses looking out over a bay dotted with a lighthouse-topped island just offshore. It has managed to stay a genuine fishing port rather than turning entirely into a tourist village, with boats still landing catch that supplies some of the seafood on menus across Cork. The main draw is the Ballycotton Cliff Walk, a roughly 4-kilometre coastal path to the neighbouring village of Shanagarry that ranks among the finest short walks on the south coast, tracing clifftops with views back over the harbour and out to Ballycotton Island's distinctive black-and-white lighthouse. It's an easy, low-key stop rather than a major attraction, appealing most to those who want a genuine, unpolished coastal village and a good stretch of legs rather than a curated visitor experience.

Bray is a Victorian seaside town on the County Wicklow coast, just south of Dublin, built up in the 19th century as a fashionable beach resort once the railway connected it to the capital — a role it still plays today as a popular day-trip escape from the city. Its long promenade, backed by amusement arcades and ice-cream shops, runs beneath Bray Head, a steep headland whose cliff-edge path is the town's real highlight and one of the most rewarding short hikes near Dublin. The walk up and around Bray Head offers sweeping views over the Irish Sea and, on the far side, a coastal path all the way to the picturesque village of Greystones, a route regularly ranked among Ireland's best short coastal walks. Bray itself has a slightly faded, old-fashioned resort charm rather than polish, but its accessibility from Dublin by rail, combined with the cliff walk, the National Sea Life aquarium, and its position at the gateway to the Wicklow Mountains, makes it a well-used and genuinely worthwhile stop rather than just a beach town.

Carraroe is a small Irish-speaking village in the Connemara Gaeltacht, best known well beyond its size for Coral Strand, a beach made not of sand but of tiny bleached fragments of maerl, a calcified seaweed, giving it an unusually pale, almost tropical look against the cold Atlantic water. It's a striking and slightly surreal sight, one of the more unusual beaches in Ireland, and a favourite stop for anyone touring the Connemara coast. Beyond the beach, Carraroe is a genuine working Gaeltacht community, where Irish is the language of daily life, and the surrounding area is dotted with quiet coves, currach boats, and traditional stone-walled fields typical of this stretch of coast. It's not a place with a long list of sights so much as a scenic, low-key detour, best combined with a wider drive around the Connemara peninsula rather than visited as a standalone destination.

Clifden is the unofficial capital of Connemara, a small market town built in the early 1800s by local landlord John D'Arcy specifically to bring order and commerce to a wild stretch of coast, and it still functions as the natural base for exploring the region. Its twin church spires and colourful main street give it a lively, self-contained character, and it hosts one of the west of Ireland's best-known agricultural events, the Clifden Show, each August. Just outside town, the Sky Road is the reason many visitors come at all — a looping coastal drive with some of the most dramatic Atlantic views in Connemara, taking in cliffs, offshore islands, and the wide sweep of Clifden Bay. The town is also close to the site where Alcock and Brown crash-landed in a bog in 1919, having just completed the first non-stop transatlantic flight, a piece of aviation history marked by a monument nearby. With good restaurants and pubs, Clifden makes a comfortable overnight base for a wider Connemara loop rather than a single-sight destination.

Cobh, on Cork Harbour, has one of the most emotionally weighted histories of any Irish town: it was the final port of call for the Titanic before it crossed the Atlantic in 1912, and separately the departure point for millions of Irish emigrants leaving for America during and after the Famine. Its waterfront, backed by the towering spire of St Colman's Cathedral rising above tiers of pastel-coloured Victorian houses, is one of the most photographed harbour views in Ireland. The Cobh Heritage Centre tells this dual story in detail, including the Lusitania, which was sunk off the coast nearby in 1915 with many of the dead brought to Cobh's Old Church Cemetery. The town's compact centre, brightly painted terraces climbing the hillside, and genuine maritime weight — rather than a manufactured tourist theme — make it a substantial stop rather than a quick photo opportunity, especially for anyone with Irish emigrant ancestry researching their own family history.

Cong is a tiny village straddling the Mayo–Galway border, wedged on the narrow strip of land between Lough Corrib and Lough Mask, and it punches well above its size thanks to two things: the ruined 12th-century Cong Abbey and the fact that John Ford shot The Quiet Man here in 1951. The abbey, founded by the King of Connacht Turlough Mor O'Conor, still has a beautifully carved monks' fishing house standing on stilts over the fast-flowing Cong River, and its cloisters make for a quiet, atmospheric wander even if you know nothing about the film. Most visitors, though, come for the Quiet Man connection — the village leans into it hard, with a heritage cottage, replica sets, and pub murals, and Ashford Castle, the turreted 13th-century estate-turned-luxury-hotel that anchors the village, was the film's real backdrop and is still worth strolling the grounds of even if you're not a guest. It's a slow, green, watery place best enjoyed on foot or by boat rather than rushed through.

Cork is Ireland's second city and it knows it — locals will tell you, only half-joking, that it's the "real capital." Built on an island in the River Lee, its center is a compact grid of quays and narrow streets that funnel down to the English Market, a covered Victorian food market that's been trading since 1788 and remains the best single place in the country to eat and shop for local produce. The city has a distinct identity shaped by its port history, its rebel reputation during the War of Independence, and a lively arts and music scene that punches above its size — this is a city of pubs with trad sessions, independent bookshops, and a genuine foodie culture. Just outside the center, Cork's charm expands: Shandon's pepper-pot steeple and bells you can ring yourself, the pastel houses climbing the hills on both banks, and easy day trips to Cobh, Blarney, and Kinsale. It's a working city more than a postcard one, and that's exactly its appeal.

Dingle is the small fishing town at the heart of the Dingle Peninsula, one of the most dramatic and least crowded stretches of Ireland's west coast, and it has managed to stay genuinely working — trawlers still land catch at the harbor — while also becoming a magnet for musicians, artists, and food lovers. The town itself is a cluster of brightly painted shopfronts and pubs, several of which double as hardware stores or grocers by day and trad music venues by night; Dingle has an outsized reputation for spontaneous sessions. Fungie the dolphin, who lived in the harbor for decades until his disappearance in 2020, put the town on the tourist map, and boat trips out into the bay remain popular even without him. But the real draw is the peninsula itself — the Slea Head Drive loops past beehive huts, an early Christian oratory at Gallarus, sweeping Atlantic views, and the Irish-speaking villages of the Gaeltacht — making Dingle less a destination in itself than the best possible base for exploring one of Ireland's most scenic corners.

Drumcliffe is a small crossroads village in County Sligo, but it holds outsized significance for anyone interested in Irish poetry: W.B. Yeats is buried in the churchyard of St Columba's Church of Ireland here, under the simple headstone bearing his own chosen epitaph, "Cast a cold eye / On life, on death." Yeats requested burial in Drumcliffe specifically because his great-grandfather had been rector of the church, and the site sits in the literal shadow of Benbulben, the flat-topped, dramatically sheared mountain that appears again and again in his poetry as a symbol of the Sligo landscape he loved. Beyond the grave, there isn't much to the village itself — a church, a round tower base, and a small craft/tea room — but the combination of the grave, the view of Benbulben, and the surrounding countryside makes it a meaningful, atmospheric stop for literary pilgrims and a scenic one for anyone touring the Sligo coast.

Dublin is a capital city that still feels human-scaled — you can walk from Trinity College to the Guinness Storehouse in under half an hour — and that walkability is part of what makes it such a good city to explore on foot. Georgian squares, the River Liffey splitting north from south, and a dense cluster of literary and historical sites (the Book of Kells at Trinity, Dublin Castle, Kilmainham Gaol, the GPO where the 1916 Rising was declared) sit within a compact, coherent center. Dublin's identity is bound up with its writers — Joyce, Beckett, Wilde, Swift all lived and worked here — and with its pubs, which range from tourist-thronged Temple Bar to quieter, older spots where you're more likely to find a real session. It's also a young, EU-headquarters-for-tech-companies city now, with a genuinely good contemporary food and coffee scene layered on top of the historic core. What Dublin isn't is dramatic scenery — for that you head to the coast at Howth or the mountains at Wicklow, both easy day trips — but as a capital it rewards slow wandering more than a checklist of sights.

Dun Laoghaire (pronounced "dun leery") is Dublin's seaside satellite, a Victorian harbor town on the southern edge of Dublin Bay that once served as the main ferry port to Britain and still carries that grand, slightly faded maritime elegance in its terraces and piers. The two long granite piers, East and West, are a beloved local institution — Dubliners drive out specifically to walk them, ice cream in hand, with views back across the bay to Dublin's skyline and Howth Head. The town center has a good cluster of independent shops and cafes, the National Maritime Museum housed in a former mariners' church, and easy access to the sea for swimming at the nearby Forty Foot or Sandycove. It's really an extension of Dublin rather than a separate destination — most visitors come on the DART for a half-day of sea air, a pier walk, and fish and chips — but that makes it one of the easiest and most rewarding short trips from the capital.

Dunmore East is a small fishing village on the County Waterford coast where the Suir estuary meets the open sea, known locally for its thatched cottages clustered around the harbor, a still-active fishing fleet, and some of the best cliff and coastal walking in the southeast. The upper village sits above a working harbor with brightly painted boats, while a scattering of sandy coves and beaches — Councillor's Strand and Ladies Cove among them — make it a popular, low-key summer spot for swimming and sailing rather than a heavily touristed destination. A red-and-white lighthouse and a set of dramatic cliffs give the coastal path real drama, and the village has become something of a stronghold for sea angling and small-boat sailing, with a yacht club active for over a century. It's the kind of place Irish families have quietly holidayed at for generations rather than one that shows up on international must-see lists — which is exactly its appeal.

Galway is Ireland's self-styled cultural capital, a compact city on the west coast where the River Corrib rushes down to Galway Bay and the medieval street plan survives almost intact — Latin Quarter lanes lined with buskers, pubs, and independent shops that give the city its famously buzzing, festival-heavy energy. It sits at the edge of the Gaeltacht, and Irish is spoken here more than in most Irish cities, which feeds into a strong live music scene rooted in traditional sessions as much as contemporary bands. Galway punches well above its size for festivals — the Galway International Arts Festival and the Galway Races both draw huge crowds — and the Spanish Arch and old city walls are reminders of its history as a major medieval trading port with ties to Spain. It's also the natural gateway to the west: the Aran Islands, Connemara, and the Cliffs of Moher are all easy day trips, making Galway less a single-sight city and more a lively base with real character of its own.

Glenbeigh is a small village on the Ring of Kerry, tucked between the mountains and Dingle Bay, best known for Rossbeigh Strand — a long, sandy blue-flag beach backed by dunes with sweeping views across the bay to the Dingle Peninsula. It's a low-key stop rather than a headline destination on the Ring of Kerry route, but that's part of its value: while coaches move quickly through, Glenbeigh rewards those who pause for a walk on Rossbeigh's three-kilometer strand or a look at the ruins of Wynn's Castle. The village also sits near the start of some of the area's better hiking, including routes up into the Kerry mountains and the scenic Windy Gap between Glenbeigh and Killorglin. It's a genuinely restful stop — golden sand, mountain backdrops, and none of the crowds of Killarney — that works well as a break partway around the Ring rather than a full-day destination in its own right.

Greystones is a former fishing village turned popular seaside town on the County Wicklow coast, about 30 kilometers south of Dublin, that's managed to grow considerably in recent years while keeping a genuinely pleasant, walkable harbor-and-beach character. Its South Beach and newer harbor marina area have become a magnet for weekend day-trippers from Dublin, and the coastal path north to Bray — the Cliff Walk — is one of the most scenic short hikes in the country, hugging the cliffs between the two towns with views out over the Irish Sea. The town itself has a good, increasingly food-focused main street, a farmers market, and a relaxed, moneyed commuter-town feel that distinguishes it from more purely touristic coastal spots. It works especially well paired with the Greystones-to-Bray cliff walk or as a gateway to the Wicklow Mountains just inland, making it one of the most rewarding easy escapes from Dublin.

Howth is the fishing village at the northern tip of Dublin Bay, sitting on its own small peninsula and reachable directly by DART from the city center, which makes it Dublin's most popular quick coastal escape. The harbor is still a working one, with trawlers unloading and a strip of seafood restaurants and chippers right on the pier that make it one of the best places near Dublin for fresh fish and chips eaten looking out at the boats. Beyond the harbor, the real draw is the cliff path that circles Howth Head — a network of routes with genuinely dramatic sea views, gorse and heather in bloom through summer, and a lighthouse at the tip — along with Ireland's Eye, a small uninhabited island just offshore that boat trips run out to. It's compact enough to do as a half-day trip but rewarding enough, between the walk, the harbor, and the seafood, to easily fill a full day.

Inistioge is a small, exceptionally pretty village in County Kilkenny on the banks of the River Nore, built around a tree-lined square and an old ten-arch stone bridge that together make it one of the most photographed villages in the southeast of Ireland. It has been used repeatedly as a film location — Circle of Friends and Widow's Peak were both shot here — precisely because it looks so effortlessly like an idealized Irish village, with Georgian and Victorian houses framing the square and the river running quietly below the bridge. Just outside the village, Woodstock Gardens and Forest Park sits on a wooded hillside above the Nore, with formal Victorian terraces, a walled garden, and miles of woodland trails offering views back down over the village and river valley. Inistioge is a place to slow down rather than tick off sights — a riverside pint, a walk across the bridge, and time in Woodstock's gardens is really the whole itinerary, and it's all the better for it.

Kenmare is a neat, colorful market town at the meeting point of the Ring of Kerry and the Beara Peninsula, and it has a well-earned reputation as one of the more refined, food-focused bases in Kerry — a place where good restaurants and craft shops outnumber the tourist-tat you find in busier stops nearby. Laid out on a triangular street plan by the Lansdowne family in the 18th century, the town sits where the Roughty River meets Kenmare Bay, and its stone Franciscan Friary ruins and a Bronze Age stone circle on the edge of town add some real depth alongside the shopping and dining. Kenmare is also the quieter, less-trafficked gateway to the Ring of Beara, a scenic driving loop that gets a fraction of the Ring of Kerry's crowds while offering comparably dramatic coastal and mountain scenery. It works well both as an overnight base for exploring the peninsulas and as a pleasant lunch stop for anyone doing the Ring of Kerry in a day.

Kilkenny is a compact medieval city built around its castle and cathedral, and it's often cited as one of Ireland's best-preserved historic towns — the "Medieval Mile" connecting Kilkenny Castle to St Canice's Cathedral runs through narrow, well-kept streets and lanes ("slips") that still follow their medieval layout. The Butler family's Kilkenny Castle, restored and set in expansive parkland along the River Nore, is the obvious centerpiece, but the city rewards wandering beyond it — Kyteler's Inn, the Rothe House, and Smithwick's brewing heritage all speak to a town that's been continuously inhabited and important for close to a thousand years. Kilkenny has also become one of Ireland's genuine craft and design hubs, home to the National Craft Gallery and a strong contemporary food and pub scene, and it hosts one of the country's best-loved comedy and arts festivals each June. It's small enough to see thoroughly in a day but atmospheric enough, especially in the evening pub scene, to reward staying overnight.

Killarney is the traditional gateway to Kerry's mountains and lakes, a lively market town that's built its whole identity around tourism for well over a century — horse-drawn jaunting cars still line up outside its hotels to ferry visitors into Killarney National Park, Ireland's oldest national park and home to Muckross House and Abbey, Torc Waterfall, and the Lakes of Killarney themselves, ringed by the MacGillycuddy's Reeks, Ireland's highest mountain range. The town center is dense with pubs, restaurants, and souvenir shops geared squarely at visitors, which can feel a bit manufactured compared to quieter Kerry towns, but it's also genuinely convenient — the Gap of Dunloe, the start of the Ring of Kerry, and the national park's best walking and cycling trails are all within a few minutes of the center. Killarney works best as a well-equipped base rather than a sight in itself: come for the lakes, mountains, and Muckross Estate, and use the town for its restaurants, transport links, and easy access to everything around it.

Killorglin is a small market town on the Ring of Kerry, straddling the River Laune where it's crossed by a fine multi-arch stone bridge, and it's best known nationally for one thing: the Puck Fair, an raucous three-day festival held every August that traces its origins back centuries and involves crowning a wild goat as king of the town. Outside of Puck Fair, Killorglin is a quieter, workaday stop compared to Killarney — a good spot for a coffee, a walk along the river, or as a base slightly off the main tourist crush while still being on the Ring of Kerry route. Its position on the Laune also makes it popular with anglers, since the river is known for salmon and sea trout, and the surrounding countryside offers access to some good, less-trodden walking in the foothills leading toward the MacGillycuddy's Reeks. It's not a destination most people plan a trip around, but as a genuine, lived-in Kerry town it's a worthwhile contrast to the more polished tourist stops nearby.

Kinsale is a picture-perfect harbor town on the County Cork coast, its narrow streets lined with brightly painted shopfronts climbing up from a marina that's as much about sailing and seafood as it is about history. It's often called Ireland's food capital — a title it's earned through a genuinely deep concentration of good restaurants for a town its size, anchored by a long-running gourmet festival tradition, and its fresh seafood is a real draw rather than marketing. Kinsale's harbor also has serious historical weight: the 1601 Battle of Kinsale was a turning point in Irish history, and the massive star-shaped Charles Fort, built in the late 17th century and one of the best-preserved fortifications of its kind in Europe, guards the harbor mouth and is well worth the walk or short drive out to see. The town is compact and hilly, easy to explore on foot in an afternoon, and its combination of maritime history, good food, and colorful streetscape makes it one of the most consistently loved stops on the south coast.

Limerick sits on the River Shannon at Ireland's longest river's tidal limit, and its long history as a strategic river crossing and port is written into the city in stone: King John's Castle, a massive Anglo-Norman fortress from the early 13th century, still dominates the riverbank in the medieval quarter, and the city withstood several notable sieges through the 17th century that left it with an outsized military history for its size. Limerick has worked hard in recent years to shed an unfairly harsh reputation and reposition itself around its genuine assets — a walkable historic core along the Shannon, a strong rugby culture (this is Munster rugby heartland), and growing food and arts scenes centered on the Georgian streets near the People's Park. The Hunt Museum, housed in a restored 18th-century customs building, holds a genuinely excellent small collection of medieval and Renaissance art and antiquities that surprises visitors expecting a purely industrial city. It's less obviously polished than Cork or Galway, but that also makes it feel less packaged — a real Irish city working through its own reinvention.

Mullaghmore is a small, wildly scenic headland village in County Sligo, known internationally among surfers for one thing above all: Mullaghmore Head is home to some of the biggest, most powerful big-wave surfing in Europe, with waves that can reach well over 10 meters during winter Atlantic swells drawing elite tow-in surfers from around the world. Outside of big-wave season, the headland is simply a dramatic, wind-scoured place to walk, with views across to Benbulben and the Sligo coastline, and a small, pretty harbor below. The village also carries a heavier historical weight — Lord Mountbatten was assassinated by an IRA bomb on his boat just off Mullaghmore in 1979, an event that remains a notable, sobering point of local history. It's a quiet place most of the year, valued by those in the know for its coastal walking and its status as a serious surfing pilgrimage site rather than for any conventional sightseeing.

Mulranny is a small village on the Mulranny (or Mallaranny) isthmus in County Mayo, where Achill Island's approach road narrows dramatically between Blacksod Bay and Clew Bay, giving it sweeping views in both directions across two very different stretches of water. It's best known today as a stop on the Great Western Greenway, a 42-kilometer traffic-free walking and cycling trail built along an old railway line between Westport and Achill, and Mulranny sits roughly at its midpoint, with a genuinely lovely blue-flag beach right beside the trail. The village itself is tiny, anchored by the grand old Mulranny Park Hotel, a former railway hotel that speaks to the area's brief heyday as a rail-served resort destination in the early 20th century, and it's surrounded by rhododendron-covered hillsides that bloom spectacularly in early summer. It's a quiet, low-key place best used as a rest stop on the Greenway or a base for exploring both Achill and the wider Mayo coast without the crowds found further into the more famous parts of the Wild Atlantic Way.

Rosses Point is a small seaside village a short drive from Sligo town, sitting on a peninsula between two long sandy strands with views across to Benbulben and Knocknarea, the two great flat-topped landmarks that define the Sligo landscape and appear throughout W.B. Yeats's poetry. Its two beaches, both popular for swimming and walking, bookend a village long associated with sailing, golf (County Sligo Golf Club here is a well-regarded links course used for national championships), and gentle, scenic coastal walks rather than any single headline attraction. A distinctive black-and-white striped metal navigation marker known as "the Metal Man," standing on rocks offshore, has marked the safe channel into Sligo harbor for well over a century and is one of the village's small, memorable landmarks. Rosses Point works best as a relaxed base for exploring the wider Sligo coastline — Yeats's grave at Drumcliffe, Mullaghmore, and Strandhill are all close by — combined with its own beaches and views for a quieter counterpoint to Sligo town itself.

Sligo is a compact west-coast market town that punches well above its size on the strength of its landscape and its literary pedigree. W.B. Yeats spent his childhood summers in the surrounding countryside, and the county is saturated with the places that shaped his poetry: the flat-topped mountain of Ben Bulben looms over the town like a stage backdrop, and Yeats himself is buried a short drive away at Drumcliffe churchyard, beneath his own epitaph. The town centre is a lively grid of pubs, independent shops and the excellent Model arts centre, with the Garavogue River running straight through the middle of it. What makes Sligo worth a stop rather than a drive-through is how much scenery sits within a few minutes of the town: Strandhill's surf beach, the flat-topped Knocknarea with its cairn said to be Queen Maeve's tomb, and Lough Gill's wooded shoreline are all close by. It's an unpretentious, workaday town rather than a polished tourist set piece, which is part of its appeal — good food, decent live music, and a genuine sense of place rather than a manufactured one.

Spiddal (An Spidéal) is a small village on the coast road west of Galway city, right in the heart of the Connemara Gaeltacht — one of the strongest Irish-speaking areas left in the country. It's a low-key, working village rather than a curated tourist stop: a scatter of pubs, craft studios and a small harbour, with the Aran Islands visible across Galway Bay on a clear day. The village has long been a centre for traditional music and Irish-language culture, and Spiddal Craft Village on its western edge gathers a handful of workshops selling pottery, jewellery and knitwear from local makers. Most people pass through Spiddal on the coastal drive out toward Connemara or Rossaveal (the ferry port for the Aran Islands), and it makes a natural, unhurried break — a walk along the strand, a coffee, a browse through the craft studios. It's not a place with headline attractions so much as a genuine slice of rural Gaeltacht life, which for many visitors is exactly the point after the busier stretches of Galway city.

Strandhill is a small seaside village a few minutes from Sligo town, and it's become one of Ireland's best-known surf spots almost by accident of geography: a long, exposed Atlantic beach with reliable swell, backed by the flat-topped bulk of Knocknarea. What was once a modest seaside resort with a promenade and amusement arcade has grown into a genuine surf town, with several surf schools running lessons for complete beginners right off the main beach, and a run of cafés and casual restaurants that cater to a young, outdoorsy crowd. Beyond surfing, Strandhill is a good base for walking — the coastal path and the climb up Knocknarea to the cairn known as Maeve's Grave both start nearby — and for unwinding at Voya, a seaweed bath house using hand-harvested local seaweed, a genuinely distinctive west-of-Ireland experience. It has more energy and a younger feel than many small Irish coastal villages, but it's still compact enough to see on foot in an afternoon.

Tramore is a lively seaside town on the County Waterford coast, built around a broad three-kilometre stretch of Blue Flag beach that has made it one of the southeast's most popular summer resorts. It has the classic feel of an Irish seaside town — an amusement park, a promenade, chip shops and ice cream — but it's also a serious surfing destination, with consistent Atlantic swell drawing surfers year-round to breaks at Tramore Bay and the nearby Guillamene and Newtown Cove, where locals also swim off the rocks. Above the town, the Metal Man — a trio of cast-iron figures on pillars marking the bay's entrance — has watched over shipping since the 1820s, and the cliff walk out to Brownstown Head gives sweeping views back over the beach and out to sea. Tramore works well both as a family beach holiday base and as a stop for surfers and walkers, and it's close enough to Waterford city to combine with a day of more urban sightseeing.

Waterford is Ireland's oldest city, founded by Vikings in 914 AD, and it wears that history unusually visibly for an Irish urban centre. The Viking Triangle at its core packs in Reginald's Tower — the oldest civic building in Ireland, still standing on its original Viking foundations — along with the Medieval Museum and Bishop's Palace, telling ththe city's story from Norse settlement through Norman conquest to Georgian prosperity. Waterford is also, famously, the home of Waterford Crystal, and the House of Waterford Crystal in the city centre still manufactures and sells the cut glass that made the name internationally known. The city sits on the River Suir, with a compact, walkable centre of Georgian streets, independent shops and a solid selection of restaurants and pubs. It doesn't have the scale or bustle of Dublin or Cork, and that's largely the appeal: a genuinely historic city that's easy to see thoroughly in a day or two, and a convenient base for exploring the beaches of the Copper Coast and Tramore just to the south.

Westport is widely considered one of Ireland's most attractive towns, and unusually for an Irish town, it was actually planned — laid out in the 18th century by architect James Wyatt around a tree-lined mall following the Carrowbeg River, with wide Georgian streets radiating out from the octagonal centre. It sits at the foot of Croagh Patrick, Ireland's holy mountain and a major pilgrimage site, and on the edge of Clew Bay, whose scattering of small islands is a well-known local landmark. The town has a lively, well-earned reputation for traditional music, with pubs like Matt Molloy's (owned by the Chieftains flautist) hosting sessions most nights, and a strong food and café scene that punches above its size. Westport House, a grand estate on the edge of town, adds parkland and family attractions. It's also the terminus of the Great Western Greenway, a flat, scenic walking and cycling trail that follows an old railway line out toward Achill Island — making Westport as much an active-outdoors base as a heritage town.