Swim or surf Enniscrone's 5km Blue Flag strand

Book a private Edwardian bath at Kilcullen's Seaweed Baths, running since 1912

Sit in the steam cabinet before the hot seawater bath, in the original order

Walk the dunes south-west along Killala Bay with Nephin across the water inland

Enniscrone has five kilometres of Blue Flag strand facing Killala Bay, and at the top of it Kilcullen's Bath House has been running since 1912 — original Edwardian porcelain baths, steam cabinets, and hot seawater with fresh Atlantic seaweed steeped in it, which leaves an oil on the skin that is the whole point. The order is: swim or surf first, bathe second. Behind the beach the dunes run south-west towards the Moy estuary, with Nephin across the bay inland.

Enniscrone Strand & Kilcullen's Seaweed Baths

Find the miniature round tower carved on the piscina in the chancel at Rosserk, with two angels and the instruments of the Passion beside it

Stand at the Rosserk riverbank — the abbey sits on the Moy estuary and the setting is exceptional

Two 15th-century Franciscan abbeys within 3km of each other, both said to have been burned by Sir Richard Bingham in 1590, both free to enter and rarely crowded. Rosserk, founded around 1441 for the Franciscan Third Order, is one of the best preserved friaries in Ireland — and someone carved a miniature round tower into the piscina.

The Twin Abbeys of North Mayo

Stand on the shore at Kilcummin on Killala Bay, where Humbert's roughly 1,000 French troops came ashore in August 1798

Visit Killala's round tower and St Patrick's Cathedral, and find the bishop's palace beside it where Bishop Stock was held under house arrest

Find the ruins of Rathfran Friary, the Dominican house just north of Killala

Find the 1798 memorial in Killala to the local men killed there on 23 September

In August 1798 about a thousand French soldiers under General Humbert came ashore at Kilcummin on Killala Bay, months after the rebellion elsewhere in Ireland had been crushed. They took Killala, held the Protestant bishop Joseph Stock under house arrest in his own palace, and marched inland — routing a far larger government force at Castlebar in an action still known as the Races of Castlebar. It ended in surrender at Ballinamuck, and back at Killala the local men who had risen to join them were cut down on 23 September.

The French Invasion of Killala 1798

Tour the Jackie Clarke Collection on Pearse Street — allow at least 90 minutes

Find the exhibits covering the 1798 rebellion and the Famine in north Mayo

Walk from the museum to St Muredach's Cathedral and the Famine memorial on the Moy

Find one thing in the collection that connects to something you can stand in front of in the town

One of the largest private collections of Irish historical material ever assembled — 40,000 items covering 1780 to 1930, free to enter, in the heart of Ballina. Use it as a lens to then walk the town that lived through all of it.

The Jackie Clarke Collection

Buy a day ticket and fish the Ridge Pool on the River Moy in the centre of Ballina

Watch salmon running upstream at the Salmon Weir in the town

Eat salmon in a Ballina restaurant, in sight of the pool the town is known for

Walk the riverside path along the Moy through the town and count the pools

The Ridge Pool sits in the centre of Ballina town on the River Moy, and it is one of the most famous salmon pools in Ireland — you fish it with the town on both banks. Day tickets are limited and booked well ahead. Upstream at the Salmon Weir you can watch fish running without a rod in your hand, which is the free version, and Ballina restaurants serve salmon in sight of the pool the town is known for.

The Ridge Pool: Salmon in the Middle of Ballina

Walk to the headland and view Dún Briste from the cliff edge

Find Poll na Seantine, the hole of the old fire, the blowhole behind the cliff edge

Find the ruined church, the holy well and the statue of St Patrick on the headland

Work out from the stack's layers how the headland you are standing on was once joined to it

Dún Briste is a 45-metre sea stack standing off Downpatrick Head in north Mayo, six kilometres north-north-east of Ballycastle, and it is said to have been cut off from the mainland by a storm in 1393. Surveyors landed on the summit by helicopter in 1980 and found stone buildings and traces of sheep enclosures up there. The headland itself carries the ruins of a church, a holy well and a statue of St Patrick, and a blowhole, Poll na Seantine — the hole of the old fire — opens in the grass behind the cliff edge.

Dún Briste at Downpatrick Head

Go through the Céide Fields visitor centre and find out how the walls were found

Walk the bog and look at the excavated walls where they come out of the peat

Find out what woodland the farmers cleared, and what the bog then did to their fields

Find out why the date of the fields is argued over

In the 1930s a schoolteacher, Patrick Caulfield, cutting turf on the north Mayo coast, noticed lines of stones coming out of the peat. Forty years later his son Seamus, by then an archaeologist, began to work out what they were: a landscape of stone-walled fields, houses and megalithic tombs buried under the blanket bog, with more than 100 kilometres of walls still hidden beneath the peat. It has traditionally been dated to the Neolithic, the fourth millennium BC, when farmers cleared pine and birch woodland for pasture; some recent research argues it is later, Bronze Age. A visitor centre on the site explains the finds.

Céide Fields: The Farms Under the Bog

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.