Walk the woodland trails down to the shore of Upper Lough Erne

Walk the old parkland trees of the demesne above the shore

Take a boat out among the islands and reedbeds of the upper lough

Look at riparian woodland growing straight into the water and work out why so little of it is left

Crom is 1,350 acres of nature reserve along the shores of Upper Lough Erne, mostly riparian forest — woodland growing right down into the water, which is a habitat that has almost vanished from Ireland. The National Trust runs it as one of three Fermanagh estates alongside Florence Court and Castle Coole. It is quiet in a way that few places are: islands, reedbed, old parkland trees, and water on every side.

Crom: Riparian Forest on Upper Lough Erne

Take a boat out on the Erne from the town harbour

Walk Butler Street down to the Diamond and round the town's buildings

Work out why the isthmus made this the crossing point

Follow the Shannon–Erne Waterway south and see how far it would take you

Béal Tairbirt means the mouth of the isthmus — the narrow neck of land between the Erne system and the drumlin lakes, which is why a town grew here and why it is now one of the main boating harbours on the Shannon–Erne. The main street runs down to the Diamond with the town's buildings around it, and below that the river. Since the Shannon–Erne Waterway reopened in 1994 you can take a boat from here the whole way to Limerick.

Belturbet: The Mouth of the Isthmus on the Erne

Paddle a multi-hour canoe or kayak route through the interconnected lakes of the Lough Oughter complex

Reach Drumlane Abbey near Milltown and find the round tower beside the ruined Augustinian church, on a site that goes back to St Columba and St Mogue

Photograph the round tower's doorway, set several metres above ground level — built high to hold the near-foundationless tower together rather than to keep raiders out

Walk the ruined nave of Drumlane's medieval church beside the tower and find the graveyard's oldest legible headstones

Christianity is said to have come to Drumlane around 555 with St Columba, and St Máedóc — St Mogue locally — founded the early monastery; what stands by the water now is a ruined Augustinian church and a round tower. It stands on the edge of the Lough Oughter lake complex, one of Ireland's largest connected inland waterway systems.

Drumlane Abbey and the Cavan Waterways

Find the round tower and the Augustinian abbey ruins in the town

Stand at the Cross Moyle high cross in the middle of the Diamond

Find the stone sarcophagus said to hold St Tighernach

Look for the pictographic tombstones in the old graveyard

St Tighernach founded a monastery at Clones in the 6th century and his cult spread right across the British Isles. What is left is scattered through an ordinary market town: a round tower, the ruins of an Augustinian abbey, pictographic tombstones, and a carved stone sarcophagus said to be Tighernach's own. In the middle of the Diamond, the town square, stands the Cross Moyle high cross — five metres of sandstone, assembled from the parts of more than one cross.

Clones: The Round Tower, the High Cross and the Sarcophagus

Get out on Lough Oughter by boat or kayak to reach the castle island

Walk right round the circular keep on its island

Find out how a castle came to be built on what may be a man-made island

Walk the trails at Killykeen Forest Park on the lough shore

Cloughoughter is a circular stone castle standing on a tiny island in Lough Oughter, four kilometres east of Killeshandra, and the only way to it is by water. The island may be a crannog — an artificial one — with fortification here possibly as early as the 6th century. The O'Reilly chiefs of East Breifne held it for centuries, and Owen Roe O'Neill, commander of the Ulster Army, is said to have died there in 1649. It sits out in the water with no road, no path and no signage, which is exactly why it looks the way it does.

Cloughoughter: A Round Castle on a Cavan Island

Paddle out into the Lough Oughter channels from Killykeen

Walk the forest trails and the lakeshore loops through the park

Work out how a drumlin field turns into a lake with no shape to it

Paddle within sight of Cloughoughter Castle out on its island

Lough Oughter is not really a lake but a flooded drumlin field — water filling every hollow between hundreds of small round hills, so what looks like a lake on the map is a maze of channels, bays and wooded islands with no obvious way through. Killykeen Forest Park sits in the middle of it with 240 hectares of woodland, and the best way to understand the place is from a canoe, working out the route as you go.

Killykeen: Paddling the Lough Oughter Maze

Walk the drumlin lanes and lake shore around Annaghmakerrig — the Centre itself is a private working retreat, not a public house

Find out what Guthrie's will actually required of the state that inherited it

Look up which writers and composers have worked here since 1981

Tyrone Guthrie launched the Stratford Festival in Canada as its first artistic director and founded the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and he died at his family's house at Annaghmakerrig outside Newbliss on 15 May 1971. The house became the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, a place where writers, composers and painters come to stay and are left alone to work — which is a rarer kind of legacy than a theatre with your name on it. It is a working retreat on a private estate rather than a house to wander into, and the drumlin country around it is the quietest part of Monaghan.

Annaghmakerrig: The House Tyrone Guthrie Left to Artists

Stand at Free Derry Corner, the gable wall left standing after the house was demolished

Walk the Bogside murals in sequence and follow what they depict

Look down on the Bogside from the city walls above and see how the ground lies

On 5 January 1969 community activists barricaded the Bogside and Creggan after the RUC came into the area, and somebody painted on a gable wall: You are now entering Free Derry. The barricades came down after six days, went back up, and the area stood outside British control until 1972. The gable end still stands on its own in the middle of the road, the house behind it long gone. The murals painted around it by the Bogside Artists tell the events of those years, including Bloody Sunday.

Free Derry: The Gable Wall and the Bogside Murals

Tour the house and look at how exactly Wyatt's neoclassical proportions are held

Look at the Portland stone façades and the Ionic portico, and think about shipping that stone from Dorset in the 1790s

Walk the 1,200-acre wooded estate and the lough shore

See the state bedroom prepared for a royal visit that never happened

Armar Lowry-Corry, 1st Earl Belmore, built Castle Coole between 1789 and 1798 as a summer retreat, and spared nothing doing it: James Wyatt designed it, the façades are faced in Portland stone brought from Dorset, and the portico carries sober Ionic capitals. It is about as pure a piece of neoclassical architecture as exists in Ireland, standing in 1,200 acres of wooded estate that the family had held since the Belfast merchant John Corry bought it in 1656.