Visit the Toons Bridge Dairy farm shop outside Macroom and watch buffalo mozzarella being stretched and shaped if it's being made that day

Taste at least 3 of the more than 15 cheeses Toons Bridge Dairy makes on site

Find the herd of water buffalo grazing near the old creamery building

Eat a pizza made with their own buffalo mozzarella at the on-site pizzeria (weekend service)

Toons Bridge Dairy keeps a herd of water buffalo at Toons Bridge, an old creamery building outside Macroom, making more than 15 cheeses on site including fresh buffalo mozzarella. The farm shop and pizzeria sit between the dairy and the garden, selling the full range alongside imported goods from the on-site Real Olive Co.

Toonsbridge Dairy: Cork's Buffalo Cheese Farm

Clonakilty and Toonsbridge

Four nights across Cork, from the English Market in the city to Midleton and Ballymaloe in the east, then west to Clonakilty black pudding and Toons Bridge buffalo mozzarella.

Cork: The Food County

Find a Sunday score on a country road in west Cork and walk the course with the crowd

Watch a thrower loft the bowl across a corner, and see how the next shot is set up straight

Hold a 28-ounce iron bowl and work out how far you could throw it

Learn how the scoring works — fewest throws over the set course wins

Road bowling — ból an bhóthair, or bullets — is played almost nowhere but Cork and Armagh. Two players take turns hurling a solid iron ball of 28 ounces along a set course of public road, and whoever covers the distance in fewest throws wins. The skill is in the loft — throwing the bowl through the air across a corner instead of letting it run — and in opening the corner, putting it down so the camber leaves the next shot straight rather than stopping in the ditch. Crowds walk the course with the players, bets are laid on individual throws, and cars wait.

Road Bowling: Throwing an Iron Ball Down a Country Road

Walk out to St Finbarr's Oratory on its lake island, where Cork's patron saint founded a monastery in the 6th century

Follow the Stations of the Cross above the ancient prayer cells behind the oratory

Walk the forest trails around Gougane Barra Lake in the Shehy Mountains, at the source of the River Lee

Sit at the lake shore near the Pass of Keimaneigh, the only road route into the valley

Gougane Barra is a lake in a bowl of the Shehy Mountains with one road into it, over the Pass of Keimaneigh. Finbarr, Cork's patron saint, is said to have founded a monastery on the island in the lake in the 6th century, and the oratory that stands there now is reached by a causeway. Behind it are the older prayer cells with the Stations of the Cross set above them. The River Lee rises in this valley, and the forest trails run right round the water.

Gougane Barra: St Finbarr's Forest Hermitage

Buy Clonakilty black pudding in the town where it began

Go into the Michael Collins House museum on Emmet Square

Find the Big Cross memorial in Asna Square

Walk Inchydoney beach and find out what happened there in 1642

Clonakilty is known for its black pudding, which began in Edward Twomey's butcher's shop on Pearse Street. Michael Collins lived in the town and went to the boys' national school here; a statue of him was put up in Emmet Square in 2002, and the house where he lived is a museum, opened in 2016. In Asna Square a statue remembers the Battle of the Big Cross in 1798, and just south of the town is Inchydoney, where in 1642 some six hundred fleeing rebels drowned when the tide came in.

Clonakilty: Black Pudding and Michael Collins

Climb the keep of 1446 to the battlements at the top

Lie back and kiss the Blarney Stone, hanging upside down over the drop

Find the Druid's Circle, the Witch's Cave and the Wishing Steps in the gardens

Walk down to the lake and see Blarney House, built in 1874

The keep at Blarney, eight kilometres from Cork city, was built by the MacCarthys of Muskerry and dates from 1446, when Cormac Láidir MacCarthy rebuilt it after an earlier castle was destroyed. The Blarney Stone, a block of Carboniferous limestone set into the tower that year, sits among the machicolations at the top, and to kiss it — which is said to give the gift of the gab — you lie back and hang upside down over the drop. Around the castle are extensive gardens with rock formations given fanciful names, the Druid's Circle, the Witch's Cave and the Wishing Steps, and Blarney House, the Colthursts' Scottish baronial mansion of 1874, looks over the lake.

Blarney Castle: Hanging Upside Down for the Gift of the Gab

Walk the exterior of Kanturk Castle — count the four flanking towers and photograph the roofless walls to show what was completed before the order to stop

Read the interpretation board at the site, which is in the care of An Taisce and find the specific objection the Privy Council recorded against the castle's scale

Drive 14km to Liscarroll Castle — walk the full perimeter of the Anglo-Norman enclosure and count the corner towers still standing

Photograph both castles side by side on your phone — the Norman enclosure and the roofless MacCarthy towers — and note the 400 years between them

A MacCarthy chieftain began building a castle at Kanturk in the early 1600s so ambitious — four flanking towers, thick curtain walls, one of the grandest in Munster — that his English Plantation neighbours reported it to the Privy Council in London. The Council ordered him to stop. The castle has stood roofless ever since. Fourteen kilometres away, Liscarroll Castle is a 13th-century Anglo-Norman enclosure — the earlier wave of conquest the MacCarthys spent 400 years trying to recover from. Visit both in one day and the history of this landscape clicks into place.

MacCarthy's Folly — Kanturk & Liscarroll

Find Bohonagh's two portal stones and the recumbent stone directly opposite them, on an east-west axis

Locate the nearby boulder burial, a separate Bronze Age monument a short walk from the circle

If visiting near the spring or autumn equinox, return at sunset and see whether the sun sets in line with the recumbent stone

Compare Bohonagh's equinox alignment to Drombeg's solstice alignment if you visit both circles on this trip

Bohonagh is a Bronze Age axial stone circle 2.4km east of Rosscarbery, part of the dense cluster of recumbent circles that make West Cork unique in Ireland. Where the more famous Drombeg circle marks the winter solstice, Bohonagh's axis points to sunset at the equinoxes, and a boulder burial from the same period sits nearby.

Bohonagh: The Equinox Stone Circle

Attend the Galway International Oyster Festival in the city on its last-weekend-of-September dates

Watch or enter the World Oyster Opening Championship, held at the festival since its early years

Taste oysters at the festival stalls and compare a native flat oyster to a Pacific rock oyster

Walk the Claddagh and Nimmo's Pier and look out over the bay the oysters come from — the native beds are out at Clarinbridge

The Galway International Oyster Festival began in 1954 when Great Southern Hotel manager Brian Collins and the owners of Paddy Burke's bar in Clarenbridge held the first oyster-opening contest for 34 people. The festival marquee stands at the Galway City Fishmarket by the Spanish Arch on the last weekend of September, and the World Oyster Opening Championship — the sport's original world title — is still decided there each year.

Galway Oysters: The Festival Since 1954

Book a guided foraging walk and meet at Buoys & Gulls Café on Bundoran's Main Street for the briefing

Hand-harvest at least three edible seaweed species along the shoreline — dulse, kelp, and carrageen moss — using the cut-not-pull technique that lets the holdfast regrow

Cook a meal using your foraged seaweed the same day

Photograph carrageen moss drying flat on rocks above the tideline, the traditional method used along this coast to prepare it for carrageen pudding

Guided seaweed foraging walks run along the Bundoran shoreline, when the tides and the operator's calendar allow, starting from Buoys & Gulls Café on Main Street. Ireland's Atlantic coast produces dulse, kelp, and carrageen moss — the last of these dried flat on coastal rocks for centuries to make traditional carrageen pudding.