Take the ferry from Magheroarty and stay a night rather than day-tripping

See the work of the Tory school of naive painters on the island

Find the round tower, built in the 6th or 7th century

Walk out to the eastern spur and the pinnacles known as Balor's soldiers

Tory sits out in the Atlantic off the Donegal coast and has a king, chosen by the islanders' consensus rather than by any vote — the last of them, Patsy Dan Rodgers, was a painter who held the post from the 1990s until his death in 2018 and met every boat that landed. The island's school of naive painting grew up after the English artist Derek Hill began working here, and islanders paint the place themselves rather than leaving it to visitors. A round tower from the 6th or 7th century still stands, and out on the eastern spur are the rock pinnacles called Balor's soldiers, after the Fomorian king of the evil eye who is supposed to have lived here.

Tory Island: The King, the Painters and Balor's Rock

Walk the Horn Head loop past quartzite cliffs rising about 180m above the Atlantic, near Dunfanaghy

Find the ruins of the Horn Head Signal Tower, built during the Napoleonic Wars to watch for a French invasion fleet

Look for peregrine falcons and choughs nesting on Horn Head's cliffs

Drive or cycle the narrow road around the headland

Horn Head is a quartzite headland north of Dunfanaghy where the cliffs rise about 180 metres straight out of the Atlantic, and there is a loop walk round the top of them. On the summit stand the ruins of a signal tower thrown up during the Napoleonic Wars to watch for a French fleet that never arrived — one of a chain of them right round the Irish coast. Peregrines and choughs nest on the faces below. The road around the headland is narrow and quiet, with the Atlantic on one side the whole way.

Horn Head: A Napoleonic Signal Tower on the Cliffs

Climb Errigal from the Dunlewey side, up the quartzite scree

Cross One Man's Pass, the narrow ridge between the two summit tops

Look out over the Poisoned Glen and Dunlewey Lough from the top

Pick out the rest of the Seven Sisters running north from Errigal

Errigal rises 751m over Gweedore, the highest peak in Donegal and the highest of the Derryveagh Mountains — the southernmost and steepest of the chain locals call the Seven Sisters. It is a cone of white quartzite scree that catches the light and looks, from the road at Dunlewey, far bigger than its height suggests. The final section is a narrow ridge between the two summit tops, and the drop on either side concentrates the mind.

Errigal: The Quartzite Cone Over Dunlewey

Walk the 3.5 km Lakeside Walk from the Visitor Centre along Lough Beagh to Glenveagh Castle — the same ground the Derryveagh tenants were cleared from in April 1861

On the castle tour — self-guided most days, with guided tours limited and booked ahead — find the weighing chair in the foyer, where McIlhenny weighed every guest coming and going

Walk the Belgian Walk, a flagged terrace built in 1915 by Belgian civilian refugees displaced by the First World War, and photograph the terracotta azalea pots lining its length

In the walled garden, locate the Gothic Orangery designed by French decorator Philippe Jullian — photograph it against the exposed Donegal hillside visible beyond the garden walls

Scan the Derryveagh ridges for the golden eagles reintroduced to the park in 2000, and look for red deer on the open ground

John George Adair evicted 44 families, some 244 people, from this Donegal valley in April 1861 — clearing them under police escort after a quarrel over trespassing sheep and the killing of his Scottish steward — then built Glenveagh Castle on the emptied land between 1867 and 1873. Henry McIlhenny, a Philadelphia art collector who had rented the place each summer from 1933, bought the estate in 1938, sold the land to the state in 1975 and gave it the castle and gardens in 1979, using it himself until 1983. Golden eagles, extinct here for a century, were reintroduced into the park in 2000, and the valley holds the largest herd of red deer in Ireland.

Glenveagh: The Castle Built on Cleared Ground

Take part in an Irish-language workshop on Arranmore, the largest inhabited island in Donegal and a stronghold of Ulster Irish

Visit Arranmore Lighthouse at the island's north-west tip, first established in 1798

Go sea angling from the island's harbour at Leabgarrow

Take the ferry from Burtonport, and walk or cycle the island road round the cliffs on the western side

Arranmore is the largest inhabited island in Donegal and one of the strongholds of Ulster Irish — a dialect distinct enough from the Irish of Connacht and Munster that learners notice it immediately. The island runs Irish-language workshops, which is the honest way to spend a few days here rather than just looking at it. The lighthouse at the north-west tip was first established in 1798, and the ferry runs from Burtonport on the mainland.

Arranmore: Donegal's Gaeltacht Island

Climb Fanad Head Lighthouse on a guided tour

Find out what happened to HMS Saldanha on the night of 4 December 1811

Look out over the mouth of Lough Swilly, one of Ireland's three glacial fjords

Walk the beach at Ballymastocker Bay, where the Saldanha was wrecked

Stay a night in one of the restored lightkeepers' houses

On the evening of 4 December 1811 the frigate HMS Saldanha was last seen passing Fanad Head in a storm; next morning she was found wrecked in Ballymastocker Bay inside Lough Swilly, with no human survivors, and about 200 bodies came ashore. The story goes that the ship's parrot survived and was found the next year with a ring round its neck engraved with the captain's name. The wreck led to the lighthouse on Fanad Head, designed by George Halpin and first lit on 17 March 1817. It is one of the Great Lighthouses of Ireland: you can climb the tower on a guided tour and stay in the three restored keepers' houses. It looks out over the mouth of Lough Swilly, one of Ireland's three glacial fjords, and down the shore at Portsalon is Ballymastocker Bay, whose beach The Observer once named the second most beautiful in the world.

Fanad Head: The Lighthouse Built for the Saldanha

Cycle the Gap of Mamore, a hairpin mountain road rising to about 250m between Buncrana and Clonmany on the Urris Hills

Find the Marian shrine and St Eigne's Holy Well just below the crest, where the turas is walked from 15 August to 8 September

Ride the out-and-back from Buncrana, about 28km, or the longer loop round by Clonmany

Descend the switchback bends carefully — the road is single-track in places with no barrier

The Gap of Mamore is a single-track road that switchbacks up to about 250m between Buncrana and Clonmany, cut through the Urris Hills on the Inishowen peninsula, and it is one of the steepest climbs in Donegal. Just below the crest are a Marian shrine and St Eigne's Holy Well, where a turas is traditionally walked between 15 August and 8 September. The out-and-back from Buncrana is about 28km, and the descent has no barrier on the drop side.

The Gap of Mamore: Donegal's Hairpin Climb

Walk Roundstone's harbour, laid out by Alexander Nimmo in the 1820s

Climb Errisbeg above the village for the view over the bog and the bays

Walk the tombolo between Gurteen Bay and Dog's Bay and look at what the sand is made of

Find the Franciscan monastery built in 1835

Roundstone was laid out in the 1820s by the Scottish engineer Alexander Nimmo, who was building roads and harbours all over the west of Ireland, and fishermen from Scotland settled in it; after Catholic Emancipation a Franciscan monastery went up in 1835. Behind the village rises Errisbeg, nearly 1,000 feet, with the bogs of Roundstone below. West of it, Gurteen Bay and Dog's Bay lie back to back on either side of a tombolo, and Robert Lloyd Praeger said their sand was made of the shells of foraminifera — an exaggeration, but it is made of fragments of shells and skeletons, not rock.

Roundstone: Nimmo's Harbour, Errisbeg and Dog's Bay

Listen for corncrakes calling from the meadows in late spring and early summer

Walk out to the Cromwellian barracks guarding the harbour mouth

Look for grey seals hauled out around the island's shore

Take the ferry from Cleggan and walk one of the island's waymarked loops

Inishbofin lies eight kilometres off the Connemara coast and much of it is a Special Area of Conservation, designated for its corncrakes and its seals. The corncrake is one of the great losses of Irish farming — a bird that vanished from the mainland as silage replaced hay — and Inishbofin is one of the few places left where you can still hear one calling from a meadow at night. At the harbour mouth stands a Cromwellian fort, built on the site where local tradition says a Barbary corsair had a stronghold before it.