Walk the monastic site and compare it with the plan drawn in the Book of Mulling

Climb the Norman motte beside the monastery

Find the line of St Moling's watercourse, said to have taken him seven years to dig

Walk down to the Barrow at the foot of the village

St Moling, who died in 697, founded a monastery on the Barrow here in the 7th century, and the Book of Mulling, written here in the late 8th or early 9th century, carries a drawing long read as a plan of this monastery, showing four crosses inside and eight outside a circular wall, read as the earliest surviving plan of an Irish monastery. The story goes that Moling dug a mile-long watercourse with his own hands to power his mill, and that it took him seven years. The site holds the monastic ruins, a Norman motte and a graveyard still used.

St Mullins: The Earliest Plan of an Irish Monastery

Hire a boat or canoe from Graiguenamanagh

Navigate the river south toward St Mullins

Moor at St Mullins and visit the early medieval monastic site above the river

The Barrow is one of Ireland's three sister rivers and has been navigable since the 18th century. The stretch from Graiguenamanagh to St Mullins is the most scenic — wooded banks, working locks, and almost no one else on the water.

River Barrow Navigation

Walk under the sixteen limestone arches of the 1860 viaduct

See Borris House, held by the MacMurrough Kavanaghs in an unbroken Gaelic line

Walk a stretch of the Barrow Way below the village

Look up at Mount Leinster from the village street

Borris House is the ancestral home of the MacMurrough Kavanaghs, who claim descent from the kings of Leinster — one of the very few Gaelic families to hold their land right through. Below the village runs the viaduct locals call the Sixteen Bridges: sixteen arches of limestone built in 1860 to a design by William Richard Le Fanu, carrying a railway that no longer exists across the valley. The village also has one of the oldest golf courses in Ireland.

Borris: The Sixteen Arches and the MacMurrough Kavanaghs

Take the guided tour of the abbey — the cloister carvings require explanation to understand

Find and identify the carved figures in the arcade: knights, bishops, and saints

Find the double effigy tomb in the nave and photograph the carved detail on the figures

Walk the full site including the chapter house and refectory ruins

A 12th-century Cistercian abbey near Thomastown with one of the finest carved cloisters in Ireland — knights, bishops, and saints carved into the arcade columns. Guided tours reveal details you'd walk past without knowing.

Jerpoint Abbey

See the site of the lost town from the public road, just west of Jerpoint Abbey off the R448

Find out how the 2007 Lidar survey mapped 27 houses, a mill and a tannery under a field of grass

Read the St Nicholas story and work out why a Kilkenny parish claims the bones of Santa Claus

Walk Thomastown, three kilometres north-east — the town on the Nore that outlived it

Newtown Jerpoint was founded in the 12th century where the main crossing of the Nore was carried on a toll bridge — Jerpoint means Nore bridge. At its height it had some 27 houses, a court house, a woollen mill, a tannery, a brewery and, by repute, fourteen taverns. It was not killed by the Black Death: it lasted at least into the 17th century and then faded, probably when it lost its bridge and the road was re-routed. The ruins of St Nicholas's church stand in the middle of it, and a grave slab there, carved with a cleric and the heads of two knights, is said by local tradition to cover the bones of St Nicholas of Myra, brought back from the Crusades. A Lidar survey in 2007 mapped the whole street plan under the grass. The site lies on private land at Jerpoint Park, which has closed, so for the moment there is no way in.

Newtown Jerpoint: The Town That Lost Its Bridge

Climb Mount Leinster from the Borris side in Carlow

Reach the summit beside the transmitter mast and look out over four counties

Walk the ridge south towards Blackstairs Mountain

Drive or cycle up to the Nine Stones viewpoint on the shoulder of the mountain

Mount Leinster stands on the Carlow–Wexford border and is the highest of the Blackstairs Mountains and the fifth-highest in Leinster, after Lugnaquilla, Mullaghcleevaun, Tonelagee and Cloghernagh. The transmitter mast on top is visible for miles and is the thing everyone in the south-east navigates by. You can climb it from Borris on the Carlow side or Bunclody on the Wexford side, and the ridge running south towards Blackstairs Mountain is the better walk once you are up.

Mount Leinster: The Top of the Blackstairs

Walk the full length of the roofless nave and stand under the crossing tower

Get lost in the hedge maze, one of only two full-size ones in Ireland

Find out why Strongbow's uncle founded a Cistercian house on this estuary

Walk down to the Barrow estuary below the abbey

Richard de Clare — Strongbow — instructed his uncle Hervé de Montmorency to found a Cistercian house in Wexford, and Dunbrody is the result: a very large roofless abbey church on the Barrow estuary, with a nave you can walk the full length of and a crossing tower still standing. The visitor centre opposite is run by the present Marquess of Donegall and has one of only two full-size hedge mazes in Ireland, which is an unusual thing to find across the road from a medieval abbey.

Dunbrody Abbey: A Cistercian Nave and a Hedge Maze

Stand at what survives of the keep and work out the shape of the original from two towers

Find out how an 1814 renovation with explosives destroyed a castle six centuries old

Go into VISUAL, the contemporary art gallery and theatre in the town

Carlow Castle is thought to have been built by William Marshal between 1207 and 1213 and it was the first of its kind in Ireland — a towered keep, a great rectangular block with four three-quarter-round towers at its corners, walls 2.7 metres thick. It survived six centuries. Then in 1814 a man converting it into a lunatic asylum decided to make more room inside by using explosives, and brought most of it down. Two towers and one wall are all that is left, standing beside the Barrow in the middle of the town.

Carlow Castle: The First Towered Keep in Ireland

Walk into the square granite courtyard and pace out the 80 feet each way

Find the doors and fireplaces still readable in the foundations

Work out why a castle would be built with no keep and no corner towers

Look at the granite courses and decide for yourself whether it was ever completed

Ballymoon stands in a field three kilometres east of Bagenalstown and it is unlike any other castle in Ireland: a perfect square courtyard about 80 feet on each side, walled in granite 20 feet high and 8 feet thick at the base, with no keep and no towers. The buildings ran round the inside of the wall, and you can still read the doors and fireplaces in the foundations. It is thought to be 13th-century, and it may never have been finished. Nobody is certain who built it or why.