Walk the full length of Lahinch beach and promenade

Take a surf lesson on the beach break in front of the promenade

Walk the dunes around the old links course

Come back in a winter storm and watch the swell hit the promenade from a safe distance

Lahinch is the seaside town of north Clare — a crescent of beach facing straight into Liscannor Bay, a promenade behind it, and the dunes carrying one of the oldest links golf courses in the country. It is one of the foremost surfing beaches in Ireland and a forgiving one to learn on and the water is full of people falling off boards all summer. In winter the same bay throws swell against the prom hard enough to close the road.

Lahinch: The Beach, the Promenade and the Old Links

Walk the covered walkway beside the well and look at what pilgrims have left — photographs of the sick, children's toys, medical bracelets, rosaries, written prayers, decades deep

Walk the pattern at the well itself — three times sunwise with prayers, the circuit that gives the word its name, from the patron saint's day

Find the statue of St Brigid at the entrance, and read how the goddess and the saint merged here — the hill above was a Lughnasadh harvest site before the Christian pattern took over

Drive the 2km to the Cliffs of Moher and walk north from the visitor centre to O'Brien's Tower, built in 1835 as a viewing platform for tourists

The holy well of St. Brigid at Liscannor in County Clare is one of the most heavily used pilgrimage sites in the west of Ireland, on ground linked to the pre-Christian Lughnasadh gatherings and a documented place of pilgrimage for centuries. The well sits in a stone-walled enclosure with a covered walkway along which thousands of votive offerings — photographs, rosary beads, statues, written prayers — have accumulated over generations. The site is one kilometre from the Cliffs of Moher.

St. Brigid's Well at Liscannor

Walk the fenced cliff-top path north from the visitor centre to O'Brien's Tower

Climb O'Brien's Tower, built in 1835 as a viewing point for visitors

Look for the Aran Islands out in Galway Bay on a clear day

Read the geology and seabird displays in the visitor centre, built into the hillside

Take a boat out from Doolin and see the cliffs from the water instead

The Cliffs of Moher run about 14 kilometres down the Clare coast, 120 metres high at Hag's Head in the south and reaching 214 metres just north of O'Brien's Tower, the round stone tower Sir Cornelius O'Brien put up in 1835 so that visitors would have somewhere to look from. Over a million people a year come, nearly all of them to the visitor centre — built into the hillside so as not to break the cliff-top line — and the fenced paths either side of it. The long coastal trail that used to run the whole way from Hag's Head to Doolin is not an option at present: the six kilometres from Liscannor up to Hag's Head are closed altogether on safety grounds, and from the Doolin end you can walk only as far as Surfers Path and turn back. On a clear day the Aran Islands sit out in Galway Bay in front of you.

The Cliffs of Moher: The Cliff Top and O'Brien's Tower

Attend a trad session at Gus O'Connor's, Doolin's oldest pub, trading since 1832 and a music session fixture since Gus O'Connor's own tenure from 1956

Attend a session at McDermott's, in the same family since 1867, or McGann's, bought by the McGann brothers in 1975

During a session, identify by ear the fiddle, bodhrán, tin whistle, and uilleann pipes as musicians take turns leading a tune

Follow session etiquette for a full night — applaud between tunes rather than during them, and stay quiet through a slow air or solo song

Listen from just outside the circle at a third venue — the seats inside it belong to the players

Doolin's three pubs — Gus O'Connor's (trading since 1832), McGann's (bought from the Laffertys in 1975 by the brothers Tony and Tommy McGann), and McDermott's (in the same family since 1867) — host live trad sessions most nights of the year. Doolin has been a magnet for traditional musicians since long before it became a tourist destination.

Doolin's Three Pubs: O'Connor's, McGann's and McDermott's

Go to one of the public recitals, lectures or céilís during the Willie Clancy week — the classes are for registered students

Go to a trad session in one of Miltown Malbay's pubs

Walk Spanish Point beach and find out which Armada ships were wrecked off it

Buy a tin whistle and learn one tune well enough to play it through

The Willie Clancy Summer School, held in Miltown Malbay every year since 1973 in memory of the uilleann piper Willie Clancy, is the largest traditional music summer school in the world: in the week beginning on the first Saturday of July nearly a thousand students come from all over the world for classes in Irish music and dance. Out on the coast, Spanish Point takes its name from ships of the Spanish Armada wrecked off it in 1588; its beach, over a kilometre long, is a Blue Flag strand and one of the better-known surf breaks in Clare.

Miltown Malbay: Willie Clancy's Town and Spanish Point

Visit the Twin Wells at Lisdoonvarna Spa Wells, two natural springs emerging side-by-side from the limestone — one iron-rich, one sulphur-rich

Go through the Victorian pump house in the spa park, where the Aille and Gowlaun rivers meet

Taste the sulphur water at the pump house, still drawn straight from the Burren bedrock

Walk Lisdoonvarna's Victorian streetscape

Come in September for the matchmaking festival, held every year since 1857

Lisdoonvarna is a spa town, and the reason it exists is underneath it: mineral springs rising out of the Burren limestone, the Twin Wells running iron and sulphur side by side, with the main sulphur well at the bottom of the hill and all of the waters carrying iodine. The spa opened officially in 1845, though people were taking the waters before that, and the wells were owned by the Guthrie family until they were sold to a Dr Westropp, who developed them and built the baths; the Victorian pump house still stands in the spa park where the Aille and Gowlaun rivers meet. The town has held its matchmaking festival each September for well over 160 years, a month long and drawing upwards of 40,000 people, which makes it one of the largest events of its kind in Europe.

Lisdoonvarna: The Spa Wells and the Matchmaking Festival

Descend into Doolin Cave to see the Great Stalactite, reported at 7.3 metres and the longest known free-hanging stalactite in Europe

Find out how two English cavers from the Craven Pothole Club found the cave in 1952

Walk the cave's above-ground eco-trail through Burren farmland

Walk the full eco-trail loop before or after the cave tour, included with your ticket

English cavers from the Craven Pothole Club dropped into a hole in the Burren in 1952 and found something nobody expected: a single stalactite hanging free from the roof, reported at 7.3 metres and the longest known free-hanging stalactite in Europe. It is still there, still growing, and the cave was opened so you can stand under it. Above ground the same ticket gets you an eco-trail through Burren farmland, which is worth doing before or after to see what kind of rock makes a thing like that possible.

Doolin Cave: The Great Stalactite

Drive or walk into Glenariff and follow the waterfall trail through the gorge

Name as many of the nine glens as you can as you work along the coast

Take one of the mountain roads over the tops between two glens instead of the coast road

Look across to the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland from the high ground on a clear day

Take the road out to Torr Head, Northern Ireland's closest point to Scotland, where Lloyd's put up a signal station in 1822

Nine glens run off the Antrim Plateau down to the coast, each one a separate valley with its own name and its own character, and together they make an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Glenariff is the one people call the queen of them, a deep wooded gorge with a waterfall walk through it. The coast road links the mouths of the glens, and the mountain roads over the tops between them are empty and far better.

The Glens of Antrim: Nine Valleys to the Sea

Watch cattle being walked up onto the limestone for the winter

Come for the Winterage Festival around the October bank holiday weekend

Look at a grazed hill beside an ungrazed one and see what the scrub does

Find Arctic-alpine and Mediterranean plants growing within a metre of each other

Look into the grikes for some of the 24 fern species that grow down in them

Everywhere else in Europe, cattle come down off the hills for winter. In the Burren they go up. The limestone holds enough warmth and drains well enough that the uplands are the better winter ground, and that grazing is exactly what stops scrub taking over and shading out the flowers — which is why 23 of Ireland's 28 orchid species grow here, and why Arctic-alpine and Mediterranean plants share the same hillside. When farming industrialised and cattle moved to silage and sheds, the flowers began to lose. Restoring winterage is now conservation policy, and Burrenbeo runs a Winterage Festival around the October bank holiday to mark the cattle going up.