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

Be in Killorglin for Puck Fair, 10 to 12 August

Watch the Queen of Puck crown the wild goat King Puck

See the horse fair and the cattle fair that run alongside it

Stay for the dethroning, when King Puck is taken back to the mountains and let go

Every year from 10 to 12 August, a party goes up into MacGillycuddy's Reeks and catches a wild goat. The goat is brought down to Killorglin, a young schoolgirl chosen as the Queen of Puck crowns him King Puck, and he is crowned in the square and raised on his stand for a spell on each day of the fair — animal-welfare rules ended the old three-day vigil. It is one of the oldest fairs in Ireland and nobody can say with certainty how it started. Then he is taken back to the mountain and released.

Puck Fair: The Goat They Crown King

Find the 12th-century Romanesque doorway on the Aghadoe Cathedral ruins, carved with chevron and rope-pattern mouldings, then walk to the adjoining round tower stump

From the Aghadoe viewpoint beside the ruins, identify Lough Leane, Innisfallen Island and the MacGillycuddy's Reeks in the distance

Book a treatment at the Spa at Aghadoe, in the hotel on the same ridge as the ruins

Aghadoe, a low ridge above Killarney, drew visitors long before there was a spa: the ruined cathedral and round tower here mark a monastery said to have been founded by St Finian the Leper in the seventh century, with the first stone church going up around 1027, and the adjoining viewpoint looks straight down onto Lough Leane, Innisfallen Island and the MacGillycuddy's Reeks. The Spa at Aghadoe, in the Aghadoe Heights Hotel, now shares the same ridge and the same view.

Aghadoe Heights: Spa and the Round Tower Above the Lakes

Walk the five-kilometre spit of Inch Strand

Have a drink in the South Pole Inn, the pub Tom Crean ran after 1920

Find out what Crean's 35-mile walk across the Ross Ice Shelf was for

Inch Strand is a sand spit five kilometres long reaching into Dingle Bay, part of the Castlemaine Harbour conservation area. Five kilometres west is Annascaul, where Tom Crean was born in 1877. He left the farm at sixteen for the Navy, went south with Scott's Discovery and Terra Nova expeditions and with Shackleton's Endurance, and won the Albert Medal for a solo walk of 35 miles across the Ross Ice Shelf to save a dying officer. When he retired in 1920 he came home and ran the South Pole Inn with his wife and daughters until he died in 1938.

Inch Strand and Annascaul: Tom Crean's Country

Park at Knockreer Estate, opposite St Mary's Cathedral at the bottom of New Street, and walk the estate paths at dawn or dusk during rutting season (late September to November)

Locate a stag holding a harem of hinds and listen for its roar — the deep bellow stags use to warn off rivals during the rut

Photograph two stags locking antlers, or find fresh scarred ground where a recent contest took place

Drive to the Muckross Peninsula, directly opposite the main entrance to Muckross House, and compare the herd's size and behaviour to Knockreer's

Killarney National Park holds the only red deer herd in Ireland considered native to the country, present since prehistory. Each autumn, stags can be heard and sometimes seen at Knockreer, opposite St Mary's Cathedral, and along the Muckross Peninsula, bellowing and locking antlers for mating rights, with most of the activity in October.

The Killarney Rut: Ireland's Native Red Deer

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

Cycle the coast road from Galway city west to Spiddal, about 18km each way, along the northern shore of Galway Bay

Walk the Salthill Promenade and touch the wall at the end, the tradition among Galwegians, with the Blackrock diving tower beside it

Stop in Barna, the fishing village on the bay, and its woods above the shore

Visit the Spiddal Craft Village in An Spidéal, a village where Irish is still spoken, and its workshops

Eighteen kilometres each way along the northern shore of Galway Bay, from the city out into the Gaeltacht. It starts on the Salthill Promenade, where the tradition is to touch the wall at the far end before you turn — Galwegians do it without thinking — and the Blackrock diving tower stands beside it. Barna is a fishing village with woods above the shore. And Spiddal at the end is a village where Irish is the everyday language, with a craft village of working studios at the edge of it.

Galway Bay Coastal Cycle

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.