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

Cycle the Tralee to Fenit Greenway, the old railway line along Tralee Bay, about 12km

Visit the Tralee Bay Wetlands Centre, the wetland reserve on the edge of Tralee, and look for birds on the estuary

Walk the causeway to Great Samphire Island at Fenit and look across to the lighthouse on Little Samphire Island

Visit the Church of St Brendan at Fenit, near the traditional birthplace of the navigator saint

Twelve kilometres of old railway line along the southern shore of Tralee Bay, flat the whole way and finishing at a working fishing port. On the way out of town the Tralee Bay Wetlands Centre looks over the estuary, which is full of birds on a falling tide. At Fenit a causeway runs out to Great Samphire Island and the harbour, with the lighthouse standing offshore on Little Samphire Island, and the Church of St Brendan stands near the spot traditionally held to be the birthplace of Brendan the Navigator, who is supposed to have sailed from here to America nine centuries before Columbus.

Tralee to Fenit: The Bay Greenway

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 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

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

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

Complete the full 179km Ring of Kerry circuit starting and finishing in Killarney in daylight hours

Climb the Coomakista Pass out of Waterville — 3.5km averaging 6% with sections up to 10%, rising over 200m above the sea

Navigate Moll's Gap and Ladies View climbs successfully

Pass through Kenmare, Sneem, Waterville, Cahersiveen and Killorglin without support-vehicle backup

Record GPS proof of continuous ride completion

Finish back in Killarney having completed the full circuit in one day

Coach tours do the Ring of Kerry in a day, sitting down. This is the same 179km circuit from Killarney and back between dawn and dusk, under your own power and unsupported. The hard part is the Coomakista Pass out of Waterville — 3.5km averaging 6% with pitches to 10%, climbing over 200m straight off the sea — and then Moll's Gap and Ladies View waiting for you at the end when the legs are gone. Kenmare, Sneem, Waterville, Cahersiveen and Killorglin all have to be ridden through, not driven between.

The Ring of Kerry in a Day: 179km

Walk the 13km cliff path west from Ballycotton towards Ballytrasna

Take the boat out to Ballycotton Island and climb the lighthouse

Watch the fishing boats land at the pier and breakwater

Eat what came off the boats that morning in the village

Ballycotton is a working fishing village on the east Cork coast with a 13km cliff walk running west from it to Ballytrasna. Two kilometres offshore on its own island stands the lighthouse, commissioned in 1851, when the keeper and his family lived out there; by 1899 the keepers were housed in the town and rotated duty, the light was automated in 1991 and the last keepers were withdrawn on 28 March 1992. The tower is painted black, one of only a handful in the world, to tell it apart from the beacon on Capel Island.

Ballycotton: The Cliff Walk and the Island Light

Walk the Lighthouse Loop out to the Sheep's Head Lighthouse at the western tip

Walk one full day-stage of the 88km Sheep's Head Way

Pick one of the twenty looped walks in the network and do it

Look across Bantry Bay to Beara and across Dunmanus Bay to Mizen from the ridge

The Sheep's Head is the narrow peninsula between Bantry Bay and Dunmanus Bay, and the Way is 88km of old tracks and roads running out from Bantry to the headland at Muntervary and back along the other side. It is a walking route built out of the paths people actually used, not one cut for tourists, and the network has grown to include twenty looped walks reaching east to Kealkill, Drimoleague and Gougane Barra, where it meets the Beara-Breifne Way. The Lighthouse Loop takes you the whole way to the light at the western tip.