Get ready for a 30-mile drive that will take you thousands of years back in time. Starting in Killala, on the River Moy estuary, grab your morning cuppa in The Kiosk Café on Market Street, before exploring the fifth-century Round Tower, a 75ft limestone icon, which you might expect Rapunzel’s hair to tumble down from at any minute. Note the doorway set 11 feet above ground — access ladders would have been pulled inside to protect against marauders.
Set the satnav for Downpatrick Head, where a towering sea stack named Dún Briste stands around just 80 metres from the cliff edge. The Irish name means ‘broken fort’ — a storm is said to have snapped it from the mainland in 1393, with stories of stranded locals rescued using ships’ ropes.
The museum in Ballycastle showcases works by artists-in-residence inspired by these wild Atlantic landscapes. Afterwards, grab lunch at Céide Ladle’s food shack nearby. Locally caught mackerel served with salad and homemade brown bread should slake any road-trippers’ hunger.
The visitor centre (open March to November) interprets the oldest-known stone-walled fields on Earth — a patchwork of Neolithic fields nearly 6,000 years old that mostly lie buried in blanket bog. Poet Seamus Heaney described the place as “a landscape fossilized”.
The end point Carrowteige is a short drive from your starting point in Killala, but the brevity is deceptive, with smaller roads, hidden beaches and jaw-dropping views tempting you into stops and detours along the way. One option is to take the local road from Belderrig to Portacloy — an almost ghostly, hilly agricultural landscape where you’ll pass through swathes of cut bog dotted with grottos and ruins. It’s the beauty and sadness of the west coast in summary form. Off-peak drivers could easily have Portacloy beach to themselves.
There are lots of walking options along the coast, but a short loop on Benwee Head, near the Irish-speaking (Gaeltacht) area of Carrowteige, offers real bang for your buck. Check out the heaving seas, sheer cliffs and the Stags of Broadhaven rocks offshore, before finishing up in Carrowteige or returning to Kilala.
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At first, there is some fussing from my 10- and 12-year-old sons. “Will the water be too cold?”, “I don’t want to wear a wetsuit”, “Are there even any decent waves?”… But once their young surf instructor, Josh Mahony, appears with two boards under his arms and the kind of shoulders that suggest he could paddle south to Spain and back in his lunch break, there is only silence as they follow him into the waves.
Ireland may be relatively small, but its dramatic coasts, country roads, and historic cities have visitors wishing for more time. To help maximize your trip, we consulted local experts, ranging from food writers to photographers, librarians, and tour guides, for their best bets.
Landscapes as green and lovely as everyone says. Literary giants in Dublin; Titanic history in Belfast. A pint and good craic in a traditional pub. The lure of Celtic legends.
Green fields and hills give Ireland its “Emerald Isle” nickname. But with nearly 2,000 miles of coastline, rivers, and lakes, the island nation is also awash in blue. Rounding out all that unspoiled nature are ancient castles, historic villages, and pubs alive with traditional music. Here’s the best way to experience this colorful corner of Europe.
Strapped to a dramatic stretches of coastline, Northern Ireland’s Causeway Coastal Route is a wind-battered swirl of churning seas, shattered cliffs, expansive grasslands and long-abandoned castles. Follow it in any direction, and you’ll soon come to appreciate how this landscape became so closely associated with tales of warriors and giants. Home to many of the country’s most iconic and spectacular sites, including the jagged outcrop of basalt known as the Giant’s Causeway, this endlessly surprising route offers drivers more majesty per mile than almost anywhere else in Europe.
They call us the Honest Men, which makes me laugh every time the team gets caught cheating. Ayr United takes its moniker from a 1791 Robert Burns line: ‘Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a toun surpasses, for honest men, and bonnie lasses.’ I often wonder if those things were true then; I know they aren’t now.
It’s no secret that it’s been a year of ups and downs—but one silver lining is the affordable travel possibilities it’s opened up for American travelers. Thanks to expanding air routes, a strong U.S. dollar, and tour companies catering to younger, more frugal tourists, the world is now more accessible than ever.
Enter the Pernod Ricard “St. Patrick’s Day” sweepstakes by April 30, 2016, for a chance to win one of six grand prizes: each a trip for two to Ireland, including air, three nights’ hotel, and a tour of the Jameson distillery in Dublin.
The new year may be right around the corner, but to foresee what it might have in store for travelers, it’s useful to take a look back. Some 2017 travel industry changes were short-lived—remember the infamous laptop ban that had business travelers in a furor for a few months? But other trends from travel 2017 could have a more lasting effect.
It’s the opposite of a motorway. As I drive into the Cumeengeera Valley, scraggly summer hedgerows slap my wing mirrors. Punky tufts of grass on the boreen work like brushes, scrubbing the car’s undercarriage. The mountains around me make me feel the size a grain of rice in a giant green bowl.
If there’s one adage that sums up Dublin, it’s “big things come in small packages.” The Irish capital covers less than 45 square miles on either side of the River Liffey, but it’s brimming with enough landmarks, history, and character to fill a much larger city. From Irish literary greats such as James Joyce and Oscar Wilde to musical legends such as Bono, Dubliners have had an indelible impact on world culture, and the city promises to do the same for travelers.
Kumuta Palan and Avinash Radhakrishna’s love story has been the stuff of fairy tales. “It was your classic childhood-sweetheart thing—I moved into this neighborhood when I was 10 years old and Kumi was probably nine, and I remember Kumi and her siblings lined up along the fence, watching us move into the house next to them,” says Avinash of the couple’s first meeting in Malaysia years ago. The families became close, and as teenagers the pair were each other’s first crushes.