Tour Ballintubber Abbey, founded in 1216 by Cathal Crobdearg Ua Conchobair, King of Connacht

Find out how Catholics kept using the roofless abbey right through the penal years

Stand in the nave where Mass is said to have been celebrated without a break for over 800 years, right through the roofless years

Walk part of Tóchar Phádraig, the medieval pilgrim path linking the abbey to Croagh Patrick

Cathal Crobdearg Ua Conchobair, King of Connacht, founded Ballintubber in 1216. It was suppressed and damaged at the Reformation and left roofless — and Catholics went on using it right through the penal years anyway, which is how it earned its reputation as the abbey that would not die. The nave was finally re-roofed in 1966 for the 750th anniversary, and Mass has been said here for more than eight hundred years. From the abbey door runs Tóchar Phádraig, the medieval pilgrim path to Croagh Patrick, which you can still walk.

Ballintubber Abbey: The Abbey That Would Not Die

Cycle the Great Western Greenway from Westport toward Newport, on a trail 42 km long end to end

Ride into the Westport Estate demesne at the greenway's Westport end — the house is closed, but the grounds are open

Find out why the railway to Achill closed in 1937 and lay unused for more than seventy years

The Achill extension of the Midland Great Western Railway was built in the 1890s and closed in 1937, and the trackbed lay there for more than seventy years until it reopened as the Great Western Greenway: 42 kilometres of off-road trail from Westport through Newport and Mulranny to Achill, its first section opened in 2010 and the full route on 29 July 2011. You ride with Clew Bay on one side and Croagh Patrick across the water. At the Westport end stands Westport House, for three centuries the seat of the Brownes, Marquesses of Sligo, and designed by Richard Cassels; the family sold it in 2017 and the house itself is closed, though the estate around it stays open.

The Great Western Greenway: Westport to Achill

Walk the shore of Lough Mask, which holds more water than any other lake in the Republic

Find where the water that leaves Lough Mask underground comes up again at Cong

Walk the Dry Canal at Cong, abandoned unfinished in 1854

Look out over Lough Carra, the marl lake that drains into Mask through the Keel River

Lough Mask is a limestone lake of about 83 square kilometres, the sixth largest on the island of Ireland and the fourth largest in the Republic in Ireland by area, and with 1.3 cubic kilometres of water it holds more than any other lake in the Republic. It is the middle one of three lakes: Lough Carra drains into it through the Keel River, and it drains south into Lough Corrib — partly through the Cong Canal and partly through underground passages in the limestone, which come together at Cong to form the River Cong. The canal was meant to make that link navigable, as part of a drainage and navigation scheme part-funded by the Treasury in the Famine years, and it was abandoned unfinished in 1854, which is why it is known as the Dry Canal. The eastern half of Mask is shallow and full of islands; the western half sinks to a trench more than 50 metres deep.

Lough Mask: The Lake That Drains Underground

Climb Croagh Patrick mountain (764m) to the summit chapel

Find the site where Saint Patrick is said to have fasted for 40 days in the 5th century, giving the mountain its pilgrim tradition

Time your visit for Reek Sunday, the last Sunday in July, when anything from five to thirty thousand pilgrims climb the mountain, some barefoot

See the National Famine Memorial at Murrisk, John Behan's coffin ship of 1997, and the ruined abbey beside it

Croagh Patrick is a quartzite cone rising 764m straight out of Clew Bay, and the tradition holds that Patrick fasted on the summit for forty days in the 5th century. People have been walking up it ever since — on Reek Sunday, the last Sunday in July, anything from five to thirty thousand climb it in a single day, and some of them still do it barefoot. The scree on the final cone is the hard part, loose quartzite that moves under you. The round trip is about 7km and the chapel at the top has been there since 1905. Most pilgrims now start from Murrisk, beside the ruined Augustinian abbey the O'Malleys founded in 1457, and across the road stands the National Famine Memorial, John Behan's bronze coffin ship, unveiled by President Mary Robinson in July 1997.

Croagh Patrick: The Reek

Stand on the bridge over the River Moy where Morrogh-Bernard conceived the mill — the original building is visible from it

On the mill floor, find the Raising Machine (1898) — installed just six years after the mill opened

Find the Sulphuric Acid Jar (c.1920) on the floor and read what it was used for in the wool-finishing process

In the heritage exhibition, find the account of James Joyce applying to become a Foxford agent — the mill gets its mention in Ulysses

In 1892, Agnes Morrogh-Bernard — a nun with no engineering training — stood on a bridge over the River Moy and decided to build a working industrial mill to pull post-Famine Mayo out of destitution. She called it the Providence Woollen Mills. James Joyce applied to be her agent. It has woven for over 130 years, through a closure and receivership in 1987 and the revival that followed.

Foxford Woollen Mills: The Mill Mother Arsenius Built

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

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

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

Join a Wild Kitchen foraging walk in the Burren, learning to identify wild garlic, seaweed and other edible plants with a local guide

Cook and taste what you've foraged, prepared fresh the same day

Between October and April, spot cattle grazing the high Burren pastures — 'winterage', the reversed farming calendar of this limestone landscape

Finish with a foraged meal cooked outdoors, incorporating whatever was found that day

The Burren grows plants that have no business sharing a hillside, and a forager is the quickest way to understand why. A Wild Kitchen walk teaches you to pick out wild garlic, seaweed and the other edible things among the limestone, and then you cook and eat what you gathered the same day. Between October and April, look for cattle on the high pastures — that is winterage, the Burren's reversed farming calendar, where stock go up the hill in the cold months instead of down, and it is the reason the flowers survive.