Climb to the 30-metre round tower, one of the best preserved in Ireland

Read the carved arcade on the west wall of the cathedral

Find the 8th-century oratory said to be St Declan's burial place

Walk the Ardmore cliff loop round the head below the village

Tradition holds that Declan was working in this part of the Déisi in the early 5th century and Christianised the area before Patrick ever arrived — which would make Ardmore the oldest Christian settlement in Ireland. On the hill above the village stand a 12th-century round tower 30 metres high and in excellent condition, a cathedral of the 12th and 13th centuries with a remarkable arcaded west wall, and an 8th-century oratory beside it. The cliff walk runs out round the head below.

Ardmore: Where Christianity Arrived Before Patrick

Ardmore and Lismore

Rosslare

Six nights in a loop from Rosslare: Waterford's Viking Triangle, two nights on the Copper Coast for sea stacks and the greenway, Ardmore's round tower and Lismore's gardens, then medieval Kilkenny.

Waterford and the Copper Coast from Rosslare

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by 1899 the keepers were housed in the town and rotated duty, the light was automated in 1991 and the last keepers were withdrawn on 28 March 1992.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 walled garden, cultivated continuously since the early 1600s

Walk the upper and lower gardens and see the castle from below

Go into Lismore Castle Arts, the contemporary gallery in the west wing

Walk the Blackwater below the castle and look back up at the bluff

Lismore Castle stands on a bluff straight above the Blackwater and has belonged to the Earls of Desmond, then Richard Boyle the first Earl of Cork, and since 1753 to the Cavendishes — it is still the Irish home of the Duke of Devonshire. The 6th Duke had it largely rebuilt in Gothic style in the mid-19th century. The castle itself is not open, but the gardens are, and they include a walled garden that has been under continuous cultivation since the early 1600s.

Lismore: The Castle Above the Blackwater

Cycle the greenway west from Kilmacthomas towards the coast

Ride through the 400-metre Ballyvoyle Tunnel

Finish at Dungarvan harbour beside the castle

The Waterford Greenway opened in March 2017 on the old railway line to Dungarvan, and at 46 kilometres it is one of the longest greenways in Ireland, with 11 bridges, three viaducts and a 400-metre tunnel, running from Waterford city through Kilmeaden and Kilmacthomas to Dungarvan. The western half is the best of it: from Kilmacthomas down to the coast, over the Durrow Viaduct and through the Ballyvoyle Tunnel, along the Copper Coast and into Dungarvan.

The Waterford Greenway: Kilmacthomas to Dungarvan

Eat in The Yeats Room at Ballymaloe House, where the menu changes with what came in that day

Walk the farm and gardens that supply the kitchen

Book a course or a demonstration at the Ballymaloe Cookery School at Shanagarry

Work out how a farmhouse dining room in east Cork ended up reshaping Irish cooking

The Allens bought Ballymaloe House and its farm in 1947, and in 1964 Myrtle Allen opened a restaurant in her own dining room — The Yeats Room, named for the Jack Yeats paintings hanging in it — cooking what the farm and the sea in front of it produced that day, on a menu that changed every evening. That was heresy at the time and is now orthodoxy everywhere. The cookery school her daughter-in-law Darina Allen went on to run has trained a large share of the chefs working in Ireland today. The whole modern Irish food movement traces back to this one house.

Ballymaloe: Where Modern Irish Cooking Started

Walk Stradbally Cove, 8.5km west of Bunmahon on the Copper Coast UNESCO Global Geopark

Find the tilted beds exposed in the cliffs at Ballydowane Cove, between Bunmahon and Stradbally, and work out which way up the beds were laid down

Photograph Ballydowane's sea stacks, cut free from the cliff line by the Atlantic working along the softer rock

Take in Stradbally, Ballydowane and Boatstrand — each a short drive apart off the R675, with walks down to the sand at each

The Copper Coast Geopark is better known for its mines, but this stretch is about what the sea is doing to the rock rather than what men took out of it. The cliffs at Ballydowane expose tilted beds of red sandstone and conglomerate you can read straight off the face, and the sea has cut the softer material away into free-standing stacks on the beach. Stradbally Cove lies 8.5km west of Bunmahon, and the coastal path lets you beach-hop between Stradbally, Ballydowane and Boatstrand in a day.

Ballydowane and Stradbally: The Copper Coast's Sea Stacks

Tour the Old Midleton Distillery, now the Jameson Experience

Find the 31,618-gallon pot still, the largest ever built

See the iron water wheel of 1852 still turning

Find out how three rival distillers became Irish Distillers in 1966

The Old Midleton Distillery began as a woollen mill in 1796, was bought by the government in 1803 during the Napoleonic Wars and turned into a barracks, and became a distillery in 1825. The Murphys installed a pot still of 31,618 gallons, so big it had to be assembled on site with the building put up around it, and it is still the largest pot still ever built. An iron water wheel of 1852 still turns there. The old distillery closed in 1975, when a new one was built beside it for Irish Distillers, the merger of Jameson, Powers and Cork Distilleries, and the old buildings are now the Jameson Experience.

Midleton: The Largest Pot Still Ever Built

Take the guided tour down into the cave, 11km north of Kilkenny city

Stand under the Market Cross, the calcite column over 19 feet high

Find where the human remains were recovered and hear what is and is not known about them

Read the Annals of the Four Masters entry for 928 that names this cave

The Annals of the Four Masters record that in 928 Godfrey grandson of Ímar came out of Dublin and destroyed Dearc Fearna — this cave — and killed the people sheltering in it. Human remains have been found inside, and while it has never been conclusively proved they are the victims of that raid, the coincidence is hard to put down. The cave itself is a limestone show cave with a cross-shaped calcite column over 19 feet high called the Market Cross, the finest formation in the cave and one of the largest formations of its kind in Ireland.