Walk to Fermoy weir and watch for salmon on the Blackwater

Walk the north bank riverside path and find the former barracks complex

Find out what happened in Fermoy on 7 September 1919

Find out how John Anderson built a town here after 1791

Fermoy takes its name, Mainistir Fhear Maí, the monastery of the men of the plain, from a 13th-century Cistercian abbey. The town itself was built after 1791, when a Scotsman, John Anderson, bought the lands, and it grew around a large British Army barracks. On 7 September 1919 the IRA, led by Liam Lynch, attacked a party of British soldiers on their way to a Wesleyan church parade in the town. The Blackwater runs through the middle of it, and the weir is a place to watch salmon.

Fermoy: The Blackwater and the Garrison Town

Walk the walled garden, cultivated continuously since the early 1600s

Walk the upper and lower gardens and see the castle from below

Go into Lismore Castle Arts, the contemporary gallery in the west wing

Walk the Blackwater below the castle and look back up at the bluff

Lismore Castle stands on a bluff straight above the Blackwater and has belonged to the Earls of Desmond, then Richard Boyle the first Earl of Cork, and since 1753 to the Cavendishes — it is still the Irish home of the Duke of Devonshire. The 6th Duke had it largely rebuilt in Gothic style in the mid-19th century. The castle itself is not open, but the gardens are, and they include a walled garden that has been under continuous cultivation since the early 1600s.

Lismore: The Castle Above the Blackwater

Tour the Old Midleton Distillery, now the Jameson Experience

Find the 31,618-gallon pot still, the largest ever built

See the iron water wheel of 1852 still turning

Find out how three rival distillers became Irish Distillers in 1966

The Old Midleton Distillery began as a woollen mill in 1796, was bought by the government in 1803 during the Napoleonic Wars and turned into a barracks, and became a distillery in 1825. The Murphys installed a pot still of 31,618 gallons, so big it had to be assembled on site with the building put up around it, and it is still the largest pot still ever built. An iron water wheel of 1852 still turns there. The old distillery closed in 1975, when a new one was built beside it for Irish Distillers, the merger of Jameson, Powers and Cork Distilleries, and the old buildings are now the Jameson Experience.

Midleton: The Largest Pot Still Ever Built

Drive the R668 from Clogheen over the Vee Gap towards Lismore

Stop at the hairpin viewpoint and look out over the Golden Vale to the Galtees

Walk down to Bay Lough, the corrie lake in the hollow below the road

Carry on down the far side towards Lismore, the way the old mail coach road went

The R668 climbs out of Clogheen and crosses the Knockmealdown Mountains between Sugarloaf Hill and Knockshanahullion through the Vee Gap — Bóthar na gCorr — on a hairpin so tight the road is named for it. The road over the gap is the old mail coach road from Lismore to Clogheen. From the top the Golden Vale lies out flat below you with the Galtees behind it, and Bay Lough sits in a hollow under Sugarloaf Hill just off the road.

The Vee: The Hairpin Over the Knockmealdowns

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

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

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

Walk the exterior of Kanturk Castle — count the four flanking towers and photograph the roofless walls to show what was completed before the order to stop

Read the interpretation board at the site, which is in the care of An Taisce and find the specific objection the Privy Council recorded against the castle's scale

Drive 14km to Liscarroll Castle — walk the full perimeter of the Anglo-Norman enclosure and count the corner towers still standing

Photograph both castles side by side on your phone — the Norman enclosure and the roofless MacCarthy towers — and note the 400 years between them

A MacCarthy chieftain began building a castle at Kanturk in the early 1600s so ambitious — four flanking towers, thick curtain walls, one of the grandest in Munster — that his English Plantation neighbours reported it to the Privy Council in London. The Council ordered him to stop. The castle has stood roofless ever since. Fourteen kilometres away, Liscarroll Castle is a 13th-century Anglo-Norman enclosure — the earlier wave of conquest the MacCarthys spent 400 years trying to recover from. Visit both in one day and the history of this landscape clicks into place.