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

Tour the Swiss Cottage at Kilcommon near Cahir, an 1810 cottage orné attributed to Regency architect John Nash

Find the thatched, curved roofline and rustic timber verandah — designed to look like a rural retreat while serving as a fashionable entertaining space

Find the original Dufour wallpapers and picture the cottage's real use — entertaining the Cahir estate's guests, not everyday living

Walk from the Swiss Cottage along the River Suir, part of the same Cahir estate grounds

A cottage orné is a rich family's idea of a peasant cottage — deliberately rustic, expensively built, and never actually lived in. The Swiss Cottage at Kilcommon near Cahir is a noted example: thatched, with a curving roofline and timber verandas on several sides, put up around 1810 and attributed to John Nash, the Regency architect who later remodelled Buckingham Palace. It belonged to the estate of Lord and Lady Cahir, who used it for entertaining, and some rooms keep their original Dufour wallpapers, said to be among the first commercially produced Parisian papers. After years of neglect it was restored from 1985 by the Irish Georgian Society, the Port Royal Foundation and Sybil Connolly, and opened as a museum in 1989. It sits in its own grounds on the River Suir.

The Swiss Cottage: An Irish Cottage Orné

Find the portcullis still hanging at the gate

Ask the guide to point out what Essex's guns did to the walls in 1599

Climb the keep and look down on the Suir on both sides of the island

Find out how Essex took the castle in three days in 1599

Cahir Castle, one of the largest castles in Ireland, stands on a rocky island in the river Suir. Conchobar Ua Briain, King of Thomond, began it in 1142, and in 1375 it was granted to the Butlers, who enlarged it over the next three centuries. In 1599 the Earl of Essex brought Elizabeth's army and cannon against it and took it after a three-day siege; the damage his artillery did can still be read in the stone. The original portcullis still hangs at the gate. It came to the state after 1961 and was opened by the Office of Public Works in 1971.

Cahir Castle: The Fortress on an Island in the Suir

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

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

Cross the field and the stream to reach the priory — there is no formal entrance

Walk the four-acre site and pace out how big the precinct actually was

Find out which of the de Burghs were buried here — the graves are recorded but no tomb can now be pointed to

Look at the cloister arcade and the gatehouse still standing

Athassel covers four acres on the bank of the Suir and is the largest medieval priory in Ireland, founded in the late 12th century by the Augustinians under William de Burgh, who started the Burke dynasty. His descendants are in the ground here: Walter de Burgh, 1st Earl of Ulster, and Richard Óg de Burgh, the 2nd Earl. There is no car park, no ticket desk and usually nobody else — you cross a field and a stream to get in, and the scale of what is standing is startling once you are inside the walls.

Athassel Priory: The Largest Medieval Priory in Ireland

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

Climb Benbaun at 729m, the highest of the Twelve Bens

Walk a ridge traverse between two or more of the Bens

Look east across the Inagh valley to the Maumturks, the range's partner

Work out which peaks you think the 'twelve' actually are — nobody agrees

The Twelve Bens — Na Beanna Beola, the peaks of Beola — are sharp quartzite summits west of the Inagh valley, four of them inside Connemara National Park and the rest on open mountain beyond it, and the odd thing about them is that nobody agrees which twelve they are: there are nearly twenty peaks with Ben or Binn in the name. Benbaun is the highest at 729m. The rock is bare, the ground between the peaks is bog, and there are almost no paths, which is why a traverse here is a serious undertaking and a superb one.

Benbaun and the Twelve Bens: Connemara's Quartzite Peaks

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.