Be in Killorglin for Puck Fair, 10 to 12 August

Watch the Queen of Puck crown the wild goat King Puck

See the horse fair and the cattle fair that run alongside it

Stay for the dethroning, when King Puck is taken back to the mountains and let go

Every year from 10 to 12 August, a party goes up into MacGillycuddy's Reeks and catches a wild goat. The goat is brought down to Killorglin, a young schoolgirl chosen as the Queen of Puck crowns him King Puck, and he is crowned in the square and raised on his stand for a spell on each day of the fair — animal-welfare rules ended the old three-day vigil. It is one of the oldest fairs in Ireland and nobody can say with certainty how it started. Then he is taken back to the mountain and released.

Puck Fair: The Goat They Crown King

Walk into the Hag's Glen and climb the Devil's Ladder to the col

Stand at the summit cross of Carrauntoohil, 1,038.6m, the highest point in Ireland

Look along the Beenkeragh Ridge north to Beenkeragh and the Caher Ridge west to Caher — the only other Irish peaks over 1,000m

Come down by the zig-zags rather than the Ladder, which is badly eroded and dangerous with people above you

Carrauntoohil is the highest mountain in Ireland at 1,038.6m, standing at the centre of MacGillycuddy's Reeks on the Iveragh Peninsula. Most people go up the Devil's Ladder, a steep eroded gully out of the Hag's Glen — Com Caillí, the hollow of the Cailleach — which is the shortest way and not the easiest. Two arêtes run off the summit to the only other Irish peaks over a thousand metres: the Beenkeragh Ridge north to Beenkeragh at 1,008m, and the Caher Ridge west to Caher at 1,000m. A steel cross stands on the top.

Carrauntoohil: The Roof of Ireland

Walk the five-kilometre spit of Inch Strand

Have a drink in the South Pole Inn, the pub Tom Crean ran after 1920

Find out what Crean's 35-mile walk across the Ross Ice Shelf was for

Inch Strand is a sand spit five kilometres long reaching into Dingle Bay, part of the Castlemaine Harbour conservation area. Five kilometres west is Annascaul, where Tom Crean was born in 1877. He left the farm at sixteen for the Navy, went south with Scott's Discovery and Terra Nova expeditions and with Shackleton's Endurance, and won the Albert Medal for a solo walk of 35 miles across the Ross Ice Shelf to save a dying officer. When he retired in 1920 he came home and ran the South Pole Inn with his wife and daughters until he died in 1938.

Inch Strand and Annascaul: Tom Crean's Country

Walk or take a jaunting car through the Gap from Kate Kearney's Cottage

Stand at the Head of the Gap at 241m, the highest point of the pass

Follow the chain of lakes along the floor of the breach

Come out at Lord Brandon's Cottage in the Black Valley at the southern end

The Gap of Dunloe is a glacial breach: around 25,000 years ago a glacier in the Black Valley, part of an icecap estimated at over 500 metres deep, pushed through the mountain wall and cut this pass clean between MacGillycuddy's Reeks on the west and the Purple Mountain Group on the east. The road runs north to south from Kate Kearney's Cottage over the Head of the Gap at 241m and down into the Black Valley at Lord Brandon's Cottage, past a chain of small lakes in the bottom.

The Gap of Dunloe: A Glacier Broke Through Here

Find the 12th-century Romanesque doorway on the Aghadoe Cathedral ruins, carved with chevron and rope-pattern mouldings, then walk to the adjoining round tower stump

From the Aghadoe viewpoint beside the ruins, identify Lough Leane, Innisfallen Island and the MacGillycuddy's Reeks in the distance

Book a treatment at the Spa at Aghadoe, in the hotel on the same ridge as the ruins

Aghadoe, a low ridge above Killarney, drew visitors long before there was a spa: the ruined cathedral and round tower here mark a monastery said to have been founded by St Finian the Leper in the seventh century, with the first stone church going up around 1027, and the adjoining viewpoint looks straight down onto Lough Leane, Innisfallen Island and the MacGillycuddy's Reeks. The Spa at Aghadoe, in the Aghadoe Heights Hotel, now shares the same ridge and the same view.

Aghadoe Heights: Spa and the Round Tower Above the Lakes

Walk the ship canal towpath from Tralee to Blennerville

See Blennerville Windmill, built in 1800 and restored to working order

Climb onto the mountain track along the northern flank of the Slieve Mish

Look up to Caherconree and find out who Cú Roí was

Come down to the sea at Camp at the end of the stage

The Dingle Way is a 162-kilometre circuit of the peninsula that starts and ends in Tralee, and this is its first stage. It leaves town along the towpath of the Tralee Ship Canal to Blennerville, where the restored windmill of 1800, built for Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, stands over the old port that emigrant ships such as the Jeanie Johnston sailed from. Then it climbs onto a mountain track along the northern flank of the Slieve Mish towards Camp. Above the route is Caherconree, 835 metres, with the promontory fort of Cú Roí, the legendary king of Munster, on one of its spurs.

The Dingle Way: Tralee to the Slieve Mish

Park at Knockreer Estate, opposite St Mary's Cathedral at the bottom of New Street, and walk the estate paths at dawn or dusk during rutting season (late September to November)

Locate a stag holding a harem of hinds and listen for its roar — the deep bellow stags use to warn off rivals during the rut

Photograph two stags locking antlers, or find fresh scarred ground where a recent contest took place

Drive to the Muckross Peninsula, directly opposite the main entrance to Muckross House, and compare the herd's size and behaviour to Knockreer's

Killarney National Park holds the only red deer herd in Ireland considered native to the country, present since prehistory. Each autumn, stags can be heard and sometimes seen at Knockreer, opposite St Mary's Cathedral, and along the Muckross Peninsula, bellowing and locking antlers for mating rights, with most of the activity in October.

The Killarney Rut: Ireland's Native Red Deer

Find a Sunday score on a country road in west Cork and walk the course with the crowd

Watch a thrower loft the bowl across a corner, and see how the next shot is set up straight

Hold a 28-ounce iron bowl and work out how far you could throw it

Learn how the scoring works — fewest throws over the set course wins

Road bowling — ból an bhóthair, or bullets — is played almost nowhere but Cork and Armagh. Two players take turns hurling a solid iron ball of 28 ounces along a set course of public road, and whoever covers the distance in fewest throws wins. The skill is in the loft — throwing the bowl through the air across a corner instead of letting it run — and in opening the corner, putting it down so the camber leaves the next shot straight rather than stopping in the ditch. Crowds walk the course with the players, bets are laid on individual throws, and cars wait.

Road Bowling: Throwing an Iron Ball Down a Country Road

Book and complete the full three-day pilgrimage on Station Island

Go barefoot for the whole three days, as the pattern requires

Keep the twenty-four-hour vigil without sleep, from 10pm on the first day through to 10pm on the second

Eat the Lough Derg meal — black tea, dry toast, oatcakes and water — once a day

Walk the penitential beds, the stone circles on the island

St Patrick's Purgatory on Station Island has run to the same pattern for a thousand years, and it is not a retreat in any modern sense. The three-day pilgrimage can begin on any day from late May to 13 August. You go barefoot for the duration. You eat one Lough Derg meal a day — black tea or coffee, dry toast, oatcakes, water — and you keep a twenty-four-hour vigil without sleep on the first night. The penitential exercises are described in the old accounts as a test of both devotion and endurance, and that has not changed.