Tour Kilbeggan Distillery and find the pot still from the Old Tullamore Distillery, the oldest working pot still producing whiskey in the world

Find the 19th-century waterwheel on the River Brosna, restored to working order

Find the copy of the 1757 distilling licence on display

Taste two Kilbeggan whiskeys side by side

Kilbeggan Distillery on the River Brosna has held a distilling licence since 1757. It closed in 1957, but the licence was kept alive, and distilling started again on the site in 2007, fifty years on, around a copper pot still first installed at the Old Tullamore Distillery in the early 1800s — now the oldest working pot still producing whiskey in the world.

Kilbeggan: The World's Oldest Working Pot Still

Athlone and Kilbeggan

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

Find the high cross, mounted inside the church, and read the carved panels

Walk the line of the large ecclesiastical enclosure in the field

Find the Early Christian grave slabs, brought in from outside and set in the church with it

Find where Hugh de Lacy was killed in 1186 while building his motte from the abbey's stones

Columba founded Durrow in the 560s and it became one of the great centres of learning in early Christian Ireland. The Book of Durrow — an illuminated gospel book of around 700, with four full-page Evangelist symbols and six carpet pages, and one of the earliest surviving Insular manuscripts — was here by 916 at the latest and is now in Trinity College. Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath, built a motte here in 1180 out of the abbey's stones, and was killed at the abbey in 1186 by one of his own Irish workmen. What survives on the ground is a large ecclesiastical enclosure, five Early Christian grave slabs and a high cross of the mid-ninth century, now mounted inside the restored church off a country road, with no visitor centre and usually nobody there.

Durrow Abbey: Where the Book of Durrow Was Kept

Walk a length of esker ridge and feel the dry gravel road above the bog on either side

Find Durrow Abbey, one of the monasteries the Slighe Mhór linked

Find out how a ridge of glacial gravel became the main road across Ireland

Work out where the line between Leath Cuinn and Leath Mogha ran

When the ice sheets melted about ten thousand years ago, rivers running underneath them left behind long winding ridges of sand and gravel — eskers. The Esker Riada is the chain of them running across the middle of Ireland, and because it was the only dry ground across the central bogs it became the great east–west road, the Slighe Mhór. It is also a legendary political line: tradition has it that after a battle at Mag Lena the island was divided along it into Leath Cuinn, Conn's half, in the north, and Leath Mogha, Mogh's half, in the south. The road it carried, the Slighe Mhór, linked the monasteries of Clonard, Durrow and Clonmacnoise, and the N6 from Dublin to Galway still follows the line.

The Esker Riada: The Gravel Road That Divided Ireland

Walk the boardwalk trail into Clara Bog, one of the best-preserved raised bogs left in Western Europe, its pools and hummocks fed by rain alone

Tour the Tullamore D.E.W. visitor centre in the old bonded warehouse and find out who Daniel Edmund Williams was

Find where the road split the bog into two domes, western and eastern

Find the flush pools where alkaline groundwater supports plant life found nowhere else on the bog

Clara Bog is one of the best-preserved raised bogs left in western Europe — a dome of peat fed by nothing but rain, with its own pattern of pools and hummocks, crossed by a boardwalk so you can see it without damaging it. Around the edges, flush pools fed by alkaline groundwater support plants found nowhere else on the bog. The reserve covers some 460 hectares, and a road cut across the bog long ago left it with two domes, a western and an eastern. Ten minutes away in Tullamore, the whiskey goes back to the distillery founded in 1829 and carries the initials of Daniel Edmund Williams, its general manager and later owner; the new distillery opened in 2014.

Clara Bog and Tullamore D.E.W.

See Francis Johnston's Gothic Revival front from the demesne — public tours are suspended at present

Find out what a vaulted gallery was for in a house that was never meant to be defended

Walk the ancient oak woodland in the demesne around the castle

Ask about the ghost stories — the castle has never tried to play them down

Charles William Bury commissioned Charleville in 1798 and Francis Johnston built it between 1800 and 1812, on the edge of Tullamore beside the River Clodiagh. It is Gothic Revival taken entirely seriously — turrets, battlements and a great vaulted gallery, all of it built as a house rather than a fortification, at a moment when the country around it had just come through rebellion. The demesne oaks are old enough to have been standing well before the castle was thought of.

Charleville Castle: Francis Johnston's Gothic Fantasy

Book a guided tour — the only way onto the hill — and find Ail na Míreann, the Stone of the Divisions, where the provinces were said to meet

Climb to the top and count how many counties you can pick out

Walk the ring barrows and enclosures across the hill

Come at Bealtaine for the fire festival held on the hill

Uisneach sits near the geographical centre of Ireland and in mythology it is the symbolic centre of the island — the place of assembly, associated with the druids and with the festival of Bealtaine, and said to be the burial place of the Tuatha Dé Danann. On the slope lies Ail na Míreann, the Stone of the Divisions, a vast glacial boulder said to mark where the borders of all the provinces met. It is nicknamed the Cat Stone because it is supposed to look like a sitting cat. On a clear day you can see a large part of the country from the top.

The Hill of Uisneach: The Stone of the Divisions

Walk the front of Belvedere House and find out what the Rochforts did to each other

Walk to the Jealous Wall and find out who it was built to shut out

Cycle the Old Rail Trail west out of Mullingar

Belvedere, on the north-east shore of Lough Ennell eight kilometres from Mullingar, was built in 1740 by Richard Cassels as a hunting lodge for Robert Rochfort, later Earl of Belvedere. Rochfort had locked his wife up at their old house at Gaulstown over an alleged affair with his brother Arthur, and at Belvedere he built the Jealous Wall, a mock-ruin folly said to be the largest in Ireland, to block his view of his other brother's house. The house has Rococo plasterwork ceilings by Barthelemij Cramillion and a Victorian walled garden. The Old Rail Trail, the greenway on the old Midland Great Western line, starts at Mullingar.

Belvedere and the Old Rail Trail: The Jealous Wall

Take a sailing lesson from Dromineer, home of Lough Derg Yacht Club since 1835

Try stand-up paddleboarding in Dromineer Bay

Find the ruined tower house on the harbour

Find out why a lake needs a lifeboat, at the RNLI station in the harbour

Dromineer lies on the shore of Lough Derg, eight kilometres north-west of Nenagh, and has sailed the lake since 1835, when Lough Derg Yacht Club was founded here — one of the oldest yacht clubs in the world. Its harbour is overlooked by an ivy-clad ruined tower house, begun as a 13th-century hall house and converted in the 15th or 16th century. It is also home to the Lough Derg lifeboat, the first inland lifeboat station in the Republic of Ireland. The bay is sheltered enough for a first sailing lesson or a paddleboard.

Dromineer: Sailing Lough Derg's Oldest Waters

Tour Kilkenny Castle and its Picture Gallery, remodelled in the 1860s to hang the Butler family's paintings

Walk the Medieval Mile from the Castle to St Canice's Cathedral, and climb the 9th-century round tower — one of only three medieval round towers left in Ireland you can still climb

Visit Rothe House on Parliament Street, a merchant's townhouse halfway along the Medieval Mile

Find the Black Abbey, a Dominican friary founded in 1225, just off the Medieval Mile

Kilkenny kept its medieval street plan when other Irish cities lost theirs, and the Medieval Mile runs the length of it from the castle to the cathedral. The castle itself was turned from a Norman fortress into a house, its Long Gallery remodelled in the 1860s to hang the Butler family's pictures. At the far end, St Canice's has a 9th-century round tower that is one of only three medieval round towers in Ireland you can still climb. In between are Rothe House, a merchant's townhouse on Parliament Street, and the Black Abbey, a Dominican friary founded in 1225.