At Ceardlann an Spidéil, find the weaving studio and watch a length of cloth being worked on the loom

Visit the pottery studio and find a piece being thrown or glazed that day

Buy one piece directly from the artisan who made it and ask what makes their technique specific to Connemara

From the craft village, look out across Galway Bay and identify the Aran Islands on the horizon

Ceardlann an Spidéil, at the entrance to Spiddal village on Galway Bay, is a working craft village where resident artisans make and sell what they produce on site — weaving, pottery, stained glass and Celtic jewellery among them — with the Aran Islands visible across the bay on a clear day.

Ceardlann an Spidéil: A Connemara Craft Village

An Spidéal

Six nights of living traditional music up the west coast, from Willie Clancy's Miltown Malbay and the session pubs of Doolin to Yeats's tower at Gort and the Irish-speaking Aran Islands off An Spidéal.

Trad Music and the Atlantic: Clare to Connemara

Galway Bay

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

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

See a show under the Big Top at Fisheries Field, on the University of Galway campus beside the Salmon Weir Bridge

See at least three different types of performances across the festival programme (theatre, music, visual art)

Watch a free outdoor street performance in Galway city centre during the festival

Walk the two minutes from Fisheries Field to Galway Cathedral, then cross the Salmon Weir Bridge into the city for the free outdoor programme

Buy a ticket to at least one ticketed festival show in addition to the free outdoor programme

The Galway International Arts Festival was founded in 1978 by University College Galway's Arts Society and the Galway Arts Group, renamed from Galway Arts Festival in 2014. Its Big Top is pitched each July at Fisheries Field on the University of Galway campus, known as NUI Galway until 2022, beside the Salmon Weir Bridge, a two-minute walk up the riverbank from Galway Cathedral on the same side of the Corrib.

Galway International Arts Festival

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

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

Descend into Doolin Cave to see the Great Stalactite, reported at 7.3 metres and the longest known free-hanging stalactite in Europe

Find out how two English cavers from the Craven Pothole Club found the cave in 1952

Walk the cave's above-ground eco-trail through Burren farmland

Walk the full eco-trail loop before or after the cave tour, included with your ticket

English cavers from the Craven Pothole Club dropped into a hole in the Burren in 1952 and found something nobody expected: a single stalactite hanging free from the roof, reported at 7.3 metres and the longest known free-hanging stalactite in Europe. It is still there, still growing, and the cave was opened so you can stand under it. Above ground the same ticket gets you an eco-trail through Burren farmland, which is worth doing before or after to see what kind of rock makes a thing like that possible.

Doolin Cave: The Great Stalactite

Stand back from the rope at Poulnabrone and look at the thin capstone, tilted as it was built rather than by erosion

Find the fossils in the limestone pavement around the dolmen, from the tropical sea that laid this rock down about 350 million years ago

Read the excavation board: about 33 people were buried here, with stone tools, quartz and bone jewellery and pottery

Come back after dark: there is no lighting at the car park, and the dolmen stands against the stars

Poulnabrone — usually given as the hole of the sorrows, though the name more likely comes from bró, a quernstone — stands alone in the Burren: two portal stones and a backstone carrying a thin, angled capstone, on a low mound in a flat karst limestone landscape that was a warm shallow sea some 350 million years ago. Excavated in 1986 and again in 1988, the tomb held the remains of about 33 people, adults and children, along with stone tools, quartz and bone jewellery and pottery; the burials date from the Neolithic, with a much later Bronze Age burial in the portico.

Poulnabrone and the Burren: The Hole of the Sorrows

Climb Carnbane East for sunrise at Cairn T

Be at Cairn T at sunrise on the spring or autumn equinox, when people gather to greet the first rays

Find the megalithic art on the kerbstones of the cairns

Walk between the hilltop cairn groups across the ridge

Look out over the midlands from the summit and count the counties you can pick out

Loughcrew spreads passage tombs across four hilltops — Carnbane East, Carnbane West, Carrickbrack and Patrickstown — and they are around 5,000 years old, contemporary with the Boyne tombs but without the crowds or the visitor centre. In 1980 the researcher Martin Brennan worked out that Cairn T on Carnbane East is aligned on the rising sun at the spring and autumn equinoxes: the light runs down the passage and lands on the carved backstone, the same trick as Newgrange but twice a year instead of once. For now the OPW has closed the interior of Cairn T for conservation works, so people gather outside it at dawn.

Loughcrew: The Equinox Sunrise in Cairn T

Walk the fenced cliff-top path north from the visitor centre to O'Brien's Tower

Climb O'Brien's Tower, built in 1835 as a viewing point for visitors

Look for the Aran Islands out in Galway Bay on a clear day

Read the geology and seabird displays in the visitor centre, built into the hillside

Take a boat out from Doolin and see the cliffs from the water instead

The Cliffs of Moher run about 14 kilometres down the Clare coast, 120 metres high at Hag's Head in the south and reaching 214 metres just north of O'Brien's Tower, the round stone tower Sir Cornelius O'Brien put up in 1835 so that visitors would have somewhere to look from. Over a million people a year come, nearly all of them to the visitor centre — built into the hillside so as not to break the cliff-top line — and the fenced paths either side of it. The long coastal trail that used to run the whole way from Hag's Head to Doolin is not an option at present: the six kilometres from Liscannor up to Hag's Head are closed altogether on safety grounds, and from the Doolin end you can walk only as far as Surfers Path and turn back. On a clear day the Aran Islands sit out in Galway Bay in front of you.