Go round Kylemore Abbey, built as Mitchell Henry's castle in 1868

Walk the Victorian walled garden laid out in 1870

Find out how Belgian Benedictine nuns came to Connemara in 1920

Climb Diamond Hill from the Connemara National Park visitor centre at Letterfrack

Mitchell Henry, a wealthy London doctor, and his wife Margaret fell for this valley on their honeymoon around 1850, and in 1868 he built Kylemore Castle here; Margaret died of a fever caught in Egypt in 1874, and the walled garden was laid out by the head gardener James Garnier in 1870. In 1920 Benedictine nuns who had fled Belgium during the First World War founded Kylemore Abbey in the castle. Part of the old estate is now Connemara National Park, opened in 1980, with its entrance on the Clifden side of Letterfrack and a loop walk up Diamond Hill for the view over the park.

Kylemore and Connemara National Park

Connemara

Dublin

Ten nights in a loop from Dublin to the west and back: Clonmacnoise on the Shannon, three nights in Connemara for Roundstone, the Sky Road and Killary, then Croagh Patrick and Athlone.

Connemara and the West from Dublin

Connemara and Killary

Two weeks down the Atlantic edge: seven campsites, each with the challenges around it, from Croagh Patrick to the 618 steps of Skellig Michael.

The Wild Atlantic Way: Westport to the Skelligs

Climb Benbaun at 729m, the highest of the Twelve Bens

Walk a ridge traverse between two or more of the Bens

Look east across the Inagh valley to the Maumturks, the range's partner

Work out which peaks you think the 'twelve' actually are — nobody agrees

The Twelve Bens — Na Beanna Beola, the peaks of Beola — are sharp quartzite summits west of the Inagh valley, four of them inside Connemara National Park and the rest on open mountain beyond it, and the odd thing about them is that nobody agrees which twelve they are: there are nearly twenty peaks with Ben or Binn in the name. Benbaun is the highest at 729m. The rock is bare, the ground between the peaks is bog, and there are almost no paths, which is why a traverse here is a serious undertaking and a superb one.

Benbaun and the Twelve Bens: Connemara's Quartzite Peaks

Climb Mweelrea to 814m, the highest point in Connacht

Look down the length of Killary Harbour from the summit

Walk part of the horseshoe over Ben Bury or Ben Lugmore

Look into the cliff-lined corries cut into the south-eastern face

Mweelrea rises 814m straight above Killary Harbour and is the highest mountain in Connacht, at the heart of a horseshoe massif that takes in Ben Lugmore and Ben Bury. Its south-eastern side is cut into cliff-lined corries, and the geology of the Mweelrea Formation is entirely different from the Twelve Bens across the fjord. It is a long, pathless, serious day, and the view down the length of Killary, Ireland's best known fjord, is the payment.

Mweelrea: The Highest Mountain in Connacht

Walk out to the Marconi station site and the Alcock and Brown landing place in Derrygimlagh bog

Find the ruin of Clifden Castle, John D'Arcy's house

Cross the strand to Omey Island at low tide and find the medieval church dug out of the sand in 1981

Clifden was the idea of John D'Arcy, who first proposed a town on this coast in 1812 and built Clifden Castle, now a ruin, to the west. Four miles south, Marconi built his first high-power transatlantic wireless station, and on 17 October 1907 it opened the first fixed wireless service between Europe and North America; Jack Phillips, later the Titanic's chief radio operator, worked there. On 15 June 1919 Alcock and Brown ended the first non-stop transatlantic flight by landing their Vickers Vimy in Derrygimlagh bog beside it, mistaking the green bog for a meadow. West of town runs the Sky Road, and north at Claddaghduff you can drive or walk across the sand to Omey Island at low tide.

Clifden: Marconi, Alcock and Brown, and the Sky Road

Kayak on Killary Fjord, the 16km glacial inlet between Galway and Mayo

Walk to Aasleagh Falls on the Erriff River, where it tumbles into the head of the fjord near Leenaun

Walk the Green Road along Killary's southern shore, past the ruins of Foher — rough going on a bike

Look across the fjord to Mweelrea, Connacht's highest mountain, rising straight from the water

Killary is the best known of Ireland's fjords — a 16km glacial inlet along the Galway–Mayo border, over 40 metres deep in the middle, narrow and walled by mountains that go straight into the water. Mweelrea, the highest in Connacht, rises off the northern shore. At the head of it near Leenaun the Erriff River comes down in Aasleagh Falls. The Green Road along the southern shore is nine kilometres of famine-relief track between Leenaun and Rosroe, past the ruins of the lost hamlet of Foher, and from a kayak on the water the scale of the place finally makes sense.

Killary Fjord: The Long Inlet Under Mweelrea

Drive the Doolough Valley road from Louisburgh, the way the starving walked in March 1849, between the Sheeffry Hills and Mweelrea with the lake below the road

Read the inscription on the Famine Memorial cross beside the road — the annual Famine Walk in spring retraces the nineteen kilometres to Delphi and back

Go on to the gates of Delphi Lodge, the hunting lodge where the officials were staying and where the people were turned back

Stop at the shore of Doolough and listen — no buildings the length of the valley, and nothing but wind and water

On 30 March 1849 two officials of the Westport Poor Law Union came to Louisburgh to inspect people receiving outdoor relief. The inspection did not take place, and the officials went on to Delphi Lodge, a hunting lodge nineteen kilometres south. The several hundred people who had gathered were told to present themselves at Delphi at seven the next morning if they wanted to keep their relief. They walked through the night in bad weather, and when they reached the lodge they were told they were not eligible and sent back. Seven bodies, women and children among them, were found on the roadside above Doo Lough; nine or ten more never reached home. Some accounts put the dead at around twenty, and local tradition puts it far higher.

The Doolough Tragedy: A Valley of the Dead

Walk Roundstone's harbour, laid out by Alexander Nimmo in the 1820s

Climb Errisbeg above the village for the view over the bog and the bays

Walk the tombolo between Gurteen Bay and Dog's Bay and look at what the sand is made of

Find the Franciscan monastery built in 1835

Roundstone was laid out in the 1820s by the Scottish engineer Alexander Nimmo, who was building roads and harbours all over the west of Ireland, and fishermen from Scotland settled in it; after Catholic Emancipation a Franciscan monastery went up in 1835. Behind the village rises Errisbeg, nearly 1,000 feet, with the bogs of Roundstone below. West of it, Gurteen Bay and Dog's Bay lie back to back on either side of a tombolo, and Robert Lloyd Praeger said their sand was made of the shells of foraminifera — an exaggeration, but it is made of fragments of shells and skeletons, not rock.

Roundstone: Nimmo's Harbour, Errisbeg and Dog's Bay

Walk the Giant's Causeway at low tide, when the full basalt pavement is exposed

Cross the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge to the fishing island, about 30 metres above the rocks

Tour Old Bushmills Distillery, the working distillery whose labels carry the 1608 licence date

Park at the Hedges car park and walk the Bregagh Road at dawn — it has been closed to traffic since 2017 to protect the roots

Stop at Dunluce Castle on its basalt outcrop, reached by a bridge, between the Causeway and Portrush

Two days on the Antrim coast. The Giant's Causeway is 40,000 interlocking basalt columns left by a lava flow cooling and cracking, and it is best at low tide when the full pavement is exposed. Carrick-a-Rede is a rope bridge slung about 30 metres above the rocks to a fishing island, crossed a few at a time. Bushmills prints 1608 on its labels, the date of a royal licence to distil in the district, and the distillery still works. And the Dark Hedges — a beech avenue planted around 1775 — is worth walking at dawn; the Bregagh Road has been closed to traffic since October 2017 to keep vehicles off the trees' roots.

Causeway Coastal Route Weekend

Take the guided tour from the Mesolithic camp to the Viking harbour

Go inside the crannóg and work out why anyone would build a house in a lake

Find the excavation on the hill of Carrig, one of the first Norman forts in Ireland

The Irish National Heritage Park at Ferrycarrig, near Wexford, opened in 1987 and tells the story of settlement in Ireland from the Mesolithic to the Norman invasion of 1169, with sixteen reconstructed dwellings across 34 acres of parkland, estuary trails and wet woodland: a Mesolithic camp, a Neolithic farmstead, a portal dolmen, a stone circle, a ringfort, a monastic site, a crannóg and a Viking harbour, where the guided tour of about an hour and a half ends. On the hill of Carrig above the Slaney is a real excavation: the site of one of the first Norman fortifications in Ireland.