Westport

Ballintubber Abbey holds a genuinely remarkable distinction: founded in 1216 by Cathal O'Conor, King of Connacht, it's the only church in Ireland to have had Mass celebrated continuously on its site for over 800 years, surviving Cromwellian destruction in 1653 (when its roof was burned) and centuries of penal restrictions on Catholic worship. Local parishioners kept the faith alive here even when the building was a roofless ruin, gathering to worship among the walls, and the abbey was eventually restored in the 20th century and remains an active parish church today. It also sits directly on the historic Tóchar Phádraig, the pilgrim path once walked from here to the summit of Croagh Patrick, and pilgrims still set out from the abbey grounds. Walking through its nave and cloister, with restored Gothic windows and a quiet graveyard, gives a strong sense of continuity — this is living history rather than a preserved ruin, a place where the story of Irish Catholicism's survival through suppression is still visibly ongoing.

Ballycroy National Park protects one of the largest expanses of intact blanket bog left in Western Europe, a vast, wild stretch of Atlantic blanket bog and mountain terrain in northwest Mayo, anchored by the Nephin Beg mountain range. Unlike Ireland's more scenic, dramatic national parks, Ballycroy's appeal is its sheer emptiness and ecological significance — this is genuine wilderness, home to golden plover, red grouse, Greenland white-fronted geese and one of Ireland's last strongholds for wild breeding wader birds, all supported by peatland that has built up over thousands of years. The visitor centre near Ballycroy village does a good job of explaining why blanket bog matters ecologically and how it formed, with interactive exhibits and a short film, and it's the practical starting point before heading out onto the actual terrain, since the bog and mountains themselves have very limited paths or infrastructure. This is a park for people who want remoteness and genuine wildness rather than curated trails — serious hillwalkers exploring the Bangor Trail or Nephin Beg range will find real solitude here, but casual visitors should stick closer to the visitor centre and its boardwalk trail.

Clew Bay is the broad, island-studded bay that gives Westport its dramatic backdrop, famously said to contain 365 islands — one for every day of the year, though the real count is somewhat lower and disputed. Ringed by the Mayo coastline and dominated by the conical peak of Croagh Patrick rising at its southern shore, the bay is a place of genuine scenic drama, especially at low tide when the islands sit exposed amid mudflats and channels, or at sunset when the water catches the light against the mountains. It has real historical weight too: Clare Island and other islands in the bay were strongholds of the pirate queen Grace O'Malley in the 16th century, and the bay has long shaped the fishing and farming life of this stretch of Mayo. Viewpoints around Westport, Murrisk and the Great Western Greenway offer superb vantage points, and boat trips and kayaking let visitors get out among the islands themselves. It's less a single attraction than the defining landscape of the whole Westport area, visible from nearly everywhere you go.

Croagh Patrick is Ireland's most important site of religious pilgrimage, a conical 764-metre mountain rising sharply over Clew Bay where, tradition holds, St. Patrick fasted for forty days in 441 AD and banished snakes from Ireland. Every year, most notably on Reek Sunday (the last Sunday in July), tens of thousands of pilgrims climb it, some still barefoot as an act of penance, to reach the small white chapel at the summit. Beyond its religious significance, it's simply a serious hillwalk — a steep, loose, scree-covered path that gains significant elevation quickly, with no easy shortcuts, and it demands proper boots and reasonable fitness even though it's climbed by people of all ages during pilgrimage season. The reward at the top, on a clear day, is one of the best views in the west of Ireland: the scattered islands of Clew Bay spread out below, the Nephin Beg mountains to the north, and the Atlantic beyond. It's climbed year-round by hillwalkers as well as pilgrims, but conditions on the summit can turn quickly, so weather and footwear matter regardless of your reason for climbing.

Great Western Greenway: The Great Western Greenway is Ireland's longest off-road walking and cycling trail, a roughly 42-kilometre traffic-free route running from Westport to Achill Island along the bed of a former railway line that closed in 1937. It passes through some of Mayo's finest coastal and mountain scenery, skirting the shores of Clew Bay, running beneath the slopes of Croagh Patrick and Nephin, and threading through the villages of Newport, Mulranny and Achill Sound before reaching Achill itself. Since opening in 2010, it has become a genuine driver of tourism in this part of Mayo, with a well-developed network of bike hire shops, cafés and B&Bs geared entirely around cyclists doing sections or the whole route, and it can be walked or cycled in either direction with baggage transfer services making multi-day trips easy. The surface is flat, gentle and well-maintained, which makes it accessible to families and casual cyclists rather than just serious athletes, and the payoff — near-constant sea and mountain views along a genuinely traffic-free route — is hard to match elsewhere in Ireland.

Keem Bay is a spectacular horseshoe-shaped strand tucked at the far western end of Achill Island, reached via a dramatically scenic cliff-hugging road that itself is one of the highlights of the drive. Framed by steep green cliffs and hills on both sides — Croaghaun's cliffs to the north are among the highest sea cliffs in Ireland — the bay's clear turquoise water and golden-white sand feel almost improbable in an Atlantic setting this far north and west. It was once the base for a substantial basking shark fishery in the mid-20th century, netting sharks that gathered in the bay in numbers now rarely seen, and that history is a reminder of how different the waters here once looked. Today it's simply one of the best beaches in Ireland for swimming on a calm day, and a popular spot for snorkelling and diving given the clarity of the water, while the surrounding hills offer excellent, quiet walking with sweeping Atlantic views. Because it sits at the literal end of the road, it retains a genuine sense of remoteness that busier beaches elsewhere on the west coast have lost.

The Octagon, Westport: The Octagon is Westport's distinctive eight-sided central square, laid out as part of James Wyatt's late 18th-century plan for the town — one of Ireland's few genuinely planned towns, commissioned by the Browne family (later Marquesses of Sligo) of nearby Westport House. Originally the square held a statue of George Browne, the first Marquess, but it was toppled and destroyed during a period of anti-landlord sentiment in the early 20th century; today the square is topped by a statue of St. Patrick instead, a small but telling piece of the town's shifting relationship with its aristocratic founders. Ringed by shopfronts, pubs and cafés, the Octagon functions as a natural gathering point and is a good example of the elegant Georgian town planning that makes Westport, along with Westport House and the tree-lined Mall along the Carrowbeg River, feel more architecturally coherent than most Irish towns of its size. It's not a major sight in itself so much as the anchor of a pleasant walk through Westport's compact, attractive centre.

Westport House is a grand 18th-century mansion built for the Browne family, later Marquesses of Sligo, on the site of an earlier stronghold once held by the descendants of Grace O'Malley, the famous 16th-century pirate queen, from whom the Brownes claimed descent. Designed in stages by architects including Richard Castle and James Wyatt, the house has elegant period rooms with fine plasterwork, silver and family portraits, and its long, layered history connects Georgian aristocratic Ireland back to the O'Malley seafaring dynasty. What sets Westport House apart from many stately homes, though, is that it's not purely a heritage sight: the grounds now include a family-oriented attraction with pedal boats, zip lines, an animal farm, and other activities set within the estate's parkland and lakeside gardens, making it a rare combination of genuine historic house tour and a proper family day out. It's a good pairing with a walk into Westport town itself, given the Browne family's role in planning the town's Georgian layout, including the Octagon and the Mall.