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

Cashel and the Suir

Dublin

A loop from the ferry: Viking Dublin, the Boyne tombs, medieval Kilkenny, the Rock of Cashel, the Copper Coast, the Hook and Glendalough.

Ireland's Ancient East: A Fortnight From Dublin Port

Find the Romanesque frescoes in Cormac's Chapel, the only ones to survive in Ireland

Look up at the round tower, the oldest building on the Rock

Walk the roofless cathedral and find out who took its roof off in the 1730s

Walk down across the fields to Hore Abbey below the Rock

Brian Boru was crowned on the Rock of Cashel in 977 and made it his capital, and in 1101 the King of Munster, Muirchertach Ua Briain, gave the fortress to the Church. The oldest and tallest building on it is the round tower, 28 metres high, from around 1100. Cormac's Chapel, begun in 1127 and consecrated in 1134, holds the only surviving Romanesque frescoes in Ireland, damaged by the waterlogged sandstone. The cathedral lost its roof in the 1730s on the orders of the Anglican archbishop Arthur Price. Below the rock stands Hore Abbey, given to the Cistercians around 1270 by Archbishop David Mac Cerbaill, who by tradition turned out the Benedictines after dreaming they meant to kill him.

The Rock of Cashel: Where Brian Boru Was Crowned

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

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

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

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

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

Find the Caldragh graveyard on Boa Island and walk in among the stones

Look at both faces of the two-sided Janus figure and the hollow cut in its head

Find the smaller Lustymore figure, moved here from the neighbouring island in 1939

Decide for yourself whether these are pre-Christian or early Christian — nobody else has settled it

In the old Caldragh graveyard on Boa Island stand two carved stone figures that nobody can confidently explain. The larger is two-sided — a face on the front and another on the back, arms crossed, hollow on top — and is usually called the Janus figure, though whether it is pre-Christian, early Christian or something in between is still argued. The smaller one was carried over from Lustymore Island in 1939. They sit in an overgrown graveyard on a low island in Lower Lough Erne, with no ticket, no guide and no explanation.

The Boa Island Figures: Two Faces in a Fermanagh Graveyard

Stand under the capstone and work out how 40 tonnes was lifted into place

Throw three stones onto the capstone and see whether they stay

Find the wedge tomb standing in the same field

Look across to the Cooley Mountains, the setting of the Táin Bó Cúailnge

Proleek is a portal tomb standing in the Cooley countryside — two portal stones, a backstone, and a capstone that weighs about 40 tonnes balanced on top of them. How it was raised is the question nobody has answered. Local tradition says that if you can land three stones on top of the capstone and they stay there, you get a wish, or you will be married within the year. The top of it is covered in the evidence of people trying.