Soak in a hot seaweed bath at Collins's Seaweed Baths on Ladies Strand, Ballybunion — family-run since 1932, using freshly cut serrated wrack

Walk the Bromore Cliff Top Walk on the working farm 3km outside town, past sea caves, arches, and stacks carved by Atlantic storms

Find the ruined tower house on the headland between Ballybunion's Ladies Strand and Men's Strand beaches

Walk both Blue Flag beaches — Ladies Strand and Men's Strand — either side of the castle headland

Collins's Seaweed Baths on Ballybunion's Ladies Strand have run in the same family since 1932, using freshly cut serrated wrack. A ruined 16th-century tower house sits on the headland between the town's two Blue Flag beaches, with the Bromore Cliff Top Walk 3km further along the coast.

Collins's Seaweed Baths, Ballybunion

Take a dolphin-watching boat out from Carrigaholt into the mouth of the Shannon

Walk out to Carrigaholt Castle, built by the McMahons around 1480

Watch from the pier for the dolphins' fins in the estuary

Find out what Carraig an Chabhaltaigh, the rock of the fleet, refers to

Carrigaholt, Carraig an Chabhaltaigh, the rock of the fleet, is a fishing village where the Moyarta river meets the Shannon estuary, about 15 kilometres from the tip of the Loop Head peninsula. The McMahons, chiefs of the Corcabascin peninsula, built its castle around 1480 to watch over the mouth of the Shannon, and the ruin still stands beside the pier. The estuary has a resident group of bottlenose dolphins, and boats go out from Carrigaholt to watch them. An Irish college was founded a mile west of the village in 1912.

Carrigaholt: Dolphins at the Mouth of the Shannon

Take the seasonal ferry from Kilrush Marina across the Shannon Estuary to Scattery Island, a crossing of about 2.5km, roughly half an hour each way

Find Scattery's round tower, entered at ground level rather than high in the wall, standing over St Senan's 6th-century monastery

Walk between the ruins of Scattery's monastic churches, founded around 534 AD by St. Senan and once numbering five separate churches on the island

At the island's south end, find the remains of the Napoleonic gun battery, one of six built along the estuary against a French landing built to watch over the Shannon's shipping lane

Before or after the crossing, walk Kilrush Marina and check the tide gauge — the Shannon Estuary has one of the largest tidal ranges of any Irish estuary

Scattery Island sits 3km out from Kilrush in the mouth of the Shannon Estuary, reachable only by boat. St. Senan founded a monastery here around 534 AD, and its round tower, its doorway at ground level rather than high in the wall, is visible from the mainland long before you land.

Shannon Estuary Coastal Navigation

Go up Loop Head Lighthouse, the tower of 1854, and look out over the mouth of the Shannon

Find out how the first light here, around 1670, was a coal fire on a cottage roof

Walk out to the Bridges of Ross and find the one sea arch the Atlantic has left

Watch for shearwaters and skuas passing the Bridges of Ross in late summer and autumn

Stop in Kilbaha, the last village on the peninsula

Loop Head is the headland on the north side of the mouth of the Shannon, at the end of a long, quiet peninsula with the Atlantic on three sides. The first light here, around 1670, was a stone cottage with a coal fire burning on its roof; a tower followed in 1802, and the present tower took over in 1854. It is one of the lighthouses of the Commissioners of Irish Lights, and visitors can go up it. On the north shore the Bridges of Ross were once a set of sea arches; the Atlantic has left one. In late summer and autumn it is one of the best-known seawatching points in Ireland, when shearwaters, skuas and petrels pass close to the shore on their way south.

Loop Head: The Lighthouse and the Bridges of Ross

Check tide times, then swim the Pollock Holes — three natural rock pools on the Duggerna Reef accessible only around low water

Take the stairway down from the coast road to the Kilkee diving boards and jump the up-to-13-metre drop into the Atlantic, conditions permitting

Book a coasteering session with a Kilkee watersports operator, entering and exiting the sea around the reef's caves and gullies

Walk the cliff path west from Kilkee towards George's Head and look back at the horseshoe bay the reef protects

Kilkee's Duggerna Reef forms three natural rock pools — the Pollock Holes — exposed only around low tide, with a cliff-cut diving platform nearby allowing jumps of up to 13 metres into the open Atlantic. The reef acts as a natural breakwater, which is why the horseshoe bay is sheltered enough to swim when the open coast is not, and made Kilkee one of the bathing resorts on Ireland's west coast.

Kilkee: The Diving Boards and the Pollock Holes

Cycle the Tralee to Fenit Greenway, the old railway line along Tralee Bay, about 12km

Visit the Tralee Bay Wetlands Centre, the wetland reserve on the edge of Tralee, and look for birds on the estuary

Walk the causeway to Great Samphire Island at Fenit and look across to the lighthouse on Little Samphire Island

Visit the Church of St Brendan at Fenit, near the traditional birthplace of the navigator saint

Twelve kilometres of old railway line along the southern shore of Tralee Bay, flat the whole way and finishing at a working fishing port. On the way out of town the Tralee Bay Wetlands Centre looks over the estuary, which is full of birds on a falling tide. At Fenit a causeway runs out to Great Samphire Island and the harbour, with the lighthouse standing offshore on Little Samphire Island, and the Church of St Brendan stands near the spot traditionally held to be the birthplace of Brendan the Navigator, who is supposed to have sailed from here to America nine centuries before Columbus.

Tralee to Fenit: The Bay Greenway

Walk the ship canal towpath from Tralee to Blennerville

See Blennerville Windmill, built in 1800 and restored to working order

Climb onto the mountain track along the northern flank of the Slieve Mish

Look up to Caherconree and find out who Cú Roí was

Come down to the sea at Camp at the end of the stage

The Dingle Way is a 162-kilometre circuit of the peninsula that starts and ends in Tralee, and this is its first stage. It leaves town along the towpath of the Tralee Ship Canal to Blennerville, where the restored windmill of 1800, built for Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, stands over the old port that emigrant ships such as the Jeanie Johnston sailed from. Then it climbs onto a mountain track along the northern flank of the Slieve Mish towards Camp. Above the route is Caherconree, 835 metres, with the promontory fort of Cú Roí, the legendary king of Munster, on one of its spurs.

The Dingle Way: Tralee to the Slieve Mish

Descend into Aillwee Cave, found in 1944 by a farmer following his dog — the tour covers about 300 metres of passage carved by ice-age meltwater

Walk Caherconnell Stone Fort, an exceptionally well-preserved medieval ring fort near Leamaneh Castle

Hike the Mullaghmore Loop in Burren National Park, through the karst landscape's terraced hills

Find the pavement clints and grykes on the Mullaghmore Loop, the fissured limestone that gives the Burren its name

A farmer following his dog into a hole in the hillside in 1944 found Aillwee Cave, a kilometre of passage carved by ice-age meltwater running through the limestone. Above it on the same hill the Burren does the opposite trick: bare pavement cracked into clints and grykes — Boirinn, the name, simply means the rocky district. Caherconnell nearby is an exceptionally well-preserved medieval ringfort near Leamaneh Castle, its drystone wall about 42 metres across and still standing some 3 metres high, and the Mullaghmore Loop in the national park climbs through the terraced karst.

Aillwee and Caherconnell: The Burren Under and Over

Explore Lonehort Battery, the gun battery dug into the eastern end of Bere Island around 1900

Walk the Heritage Trail past Bere Island's four Martello towers and the garrison barracks, built after the failed French invasion attempt at Bantry Bay in 1796

Visit the Signal Tower at Derrycreeveen, part of the chain of coastal watch towers built in the early 1800s

Take the ferry from Castletownbere, the mainland fishing port serving Bere Island

In December 1796 a French invasion fleet of between 12,000 and 25,000 troops under General Lazare Hoche made for Bantry Bay, sent at the urging of Wolfe Tone, who had gone to Paris to argue that Ireland was the least defensible part of the British Isles. Most of the fleet got there. None of it landed — the weather was the worst recorded since 1708 and the commanders had been blown miles off course. Britain spent the next decade making sure of the coast, and Bere Island is what that left behind: four Martello towers and the barracks built for the garrison, a signal tower at Derrycreeveen, and at Lonehort a battery built around 1900 over an earlier Martello of 1805.