Start at the Ballyhoura Mountain Bike Trail Centre near Kilfinane

Complete at least one full circuit — pick your grade honestly

Reach the high point of your chosen route and take in the Cork/Limerick border views

Complete a second trail at a harder grade if conditions and legs allow

One of the largest purpose-built mountain bike trail networks in Ireland, run through Coillte forestry in the Ballyhoura Mountains near Kilfinane on the Cork/Limerick border. Green to black grades, proper mountain terrain, a genuine trail centre, and far quieter than its quality deserves.

Ballyhoura Mountain Bike Trails

Stand inside the Grange stone circle, the largest in Ireland

Walk the lake shore under Knockadoon Hill where people have lived for six thousand years

Find Rannach Chruim Duibh, the 40-tonne stone in the circle, and the smaller second circle nearby

Come at the summer solstice, when the sunrise aligns on the circle's entrance

Lough Gur is a horseshoe of water at the foot of Knockadoon Hill, and people have lived around it continuously for something like six thousand years — it is one of the most important archaeological landscapes in Ireland. The Grange stone circle nearby is the largest in the country — Lios na Gráinsí, a ring of standing stones banked with earth, whose entrance is aligned on the rising sun at the summer solstice. Its biggest stone, Rannach Chruim Duibh, stands over 4 metres and weighs 40 tonnes. There are also wedge tombs, hut sites and a crannog around the lake.

Lough Gur: The Largest Stone Circle in Ireland

Complete the return hike to the summit of Galtymore at 917.9m, the highest point of both Tipperary and Limerick

Stand at the summit cairn and work out how far you can see in each direction

Find the conglomerate tors on the summit ridge, left standing because the ice never covered them

Look down into the corries cut into the northern side of the ridge

Return to the Glen of Aherlow on the northern side of the range

Galtymore stands 917.9m at the centre of a range running thirty kilometres east to west between Tipperary and Limerick, and it is the highest point of both counties. It has the fourth-highest topographic prominence of any peak in Ireland, which is what makes the view from the summit cairn so disproportionate to the climb — there is nothing near it of comparable height in any direction. The central ridge stood above the inland ice sheets, so its summits are capped with conglomerate tors rather than scoured bare.

Galtymore: The Roof of Tipperary and Limerick

Walk the Woodland Loop at Gortavoher, 1.1km and graded moderate, starting from the Christ the King car park through Aherlow Nature Park and Ballinacourty Woods

If fitness allows, continue onto the Bianconi Loop (4km), which follows part of the route once used by Charles Bianconi's 19th-century horse-drawn coach network

From the trail's high point on Slievenamuck's southern shoulder, look across the valley to the Galtee Mountains

Finish at Ballinacourty House's Victorian walled garden, part of the 18th-century estate the camping park and forest trails are built around

Ballinacourty House sits on an 18th-century estate on the Glen of Aherlow's Slievenamuck ridge, its Victorian walled garden now bordered by Coillte's Gortavoher forest trails. The Bianconi Loop traces part of the route once used by Charles Bianconi's 19th-century horse-drawn coach network through Tipperary.

Ballinacourty: The Walled Garden Under Slievenamuck

Photograph Buttevant church tower — this is the steeple that gave steeplechasing its name — then drive the 8 km east to Doneraile and photograph the tower at the finish

Walk Doneraile Park and its deer herds — the parkland is free and open all year, but the house is guided tour only and closed in winter

Look across to Kilcolman Castle on the edge of its bog, where Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene before it burned in 1598 — the tower is on private land

Walk through the ruins of Buttevant's Franciscan friary, founded 1251

In 1752 two riders raced cross-country from Buttevant church steeple to the church tower at Doneraile and accidentally named a sport. The same cluster of north Cork countryside holds Doneraile Court and its deer park, the ruins of Buttevant's 13th-century Franciscan friary, and Kilcolman Castle — where Edmund Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene before it was burned in 1598.

The First Steeplechase — Buttevant to Doneraile

Drive the R663 from Bansha to Galbally, the full length of the Glen of Aherlow valley road

Stop at the Christ the King viewpoint on Slievenamuck, erected in 1950, its hand raised in blessing over the road below

From the viewpoint, pick out Galtymore (917.9m), the highest of the Galtee range

Drive on to Galbally at the western end, then return the same way — a there-and-back of about 45km

The R663 runs the full length of the Glen of Aherlow between Bansha and Galbally, with the Christ the King statue — erected in 1950 on Slievenamuck, its hand raised in blessing over the road — as the valley's best-known viewpoint. The Galtee Mountains rise on the far side, with Galtymore, at 917.9m the highest of the Galtees and the high point of both Tipperary and Limerick.

Glen of Aherlow Valley Drive

Find the welcome signs that play on the song, and the two monuments that actually stand on Main Street — Charles Kickham and the Maid of Erin

Walk the Georgian streetscape of Main Street and the streets radiating off it

Browse the independent shops along the town's Georgian streetscape

Have a pint in one of the town's traditional pubs and ask what locals make of the song

Jack Judge first sang It's a Long Way to Tipperary in a Stalybridge theatre on 31 January 1912, for a five-shilling bet, and within two years it was the marching song of the British Army in France, sung by men who in many cases had never been near the town. Harry Williams is credited with it alongside him and the authorship has been argued over ever since. What you find when you get there is an ordinary Georgian market town going about its business — which is, in its way, exactly the joke in the song. The two monuments on Main Street are nothing to do with it: a bronze of the poet and Fenian Charles Kickham, and the Maid of Erin, raised to the Manchester Martyrs.

It's a Long Way to Tipperary

Go into Reginald's Tower, the oldest civic building in Ireland, and its Viking museum

Find Henry VIII's cap of maintenance in the Medieval Museum, the only piece of his clothing that survives

Go down into the 15th-century Mayor's Wine Vault

Walk the Viking Triangle between the tower, the Medieval Museum and the Bishop's Palace

Reginald's Tower stands at the eastern end of Waterford's quay, and it is the only urban monument in Ireland to keep a Norse name — Raghnall, from the Old Norse Røgnvaldr, probably after one of the Viking rulers of the town. The Anglo-Normans built it after taking Waterford, in place of an earlier Viking fortification; the present tower is probably of the 13th or 14th century, perhaps 1253–1280, and it is the oldest civic building in Ireland, now holding the Waterford Viking Museum. Beside it the Waterford Treasures museums fill the Viking Triangle. The Medieval Museum, built round the 13th-century Choristers' Hall and the 15th-century Mayor's Wine Vault, keeps the 14th-century Waterford Charter Roll and the only surviving piece of clothing worn by Henry VIII — the cap of maintenance he gave the Mayor of Waterford, with a sword, in 1536. The Bishop's Palace, the Irish Silver Museum and the Irish Museum of Time are next door.