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

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

Drive the R668 from Clogheen over the Vee Gap towards Lismore

Stop at the hairpin viewpoint and look out over the Golden Vale to the Galtees

Walk down to Bay Lough, the corrie lake in the hollow below the road

Carry on down the far side towards Lismore, the way the old mail coach road went

The R668 climbs out of Clogheen and crosses the Knockmealdown Mountains between Sugarloaf Hill and Knockshanahullion through the Vee Gap — Bóthar na gCorr — on a hairpin so tight the road is named for it. The road over the gap is the old mail coach road from Lismore to Clogheen. From the top the Golden Vale lies out flat below you with the Galtees behind it, and Bay Lough sits in a hollow under Sugarloaf Hill just off the road.

The Vee: The Hairpin Over the Knockmealdowns

Walk to Fermoy weir and watch for salmon on the Blackwater

Walk the north bank riverside path and find the former barracks complex

Find out what happened in Fermoy on 7 September 1919

Find out how John Anderson built a town here after 1791

Fermoy takes its name, Mainistir Fhear Maí, the monastery of the men of the plain, from a 13th-century Cistercian abbey. The town itself was built after 1791, when a Scotsman, John Anderson, bought the lands, and it grew around a large British Army barracks. On 7 September 1919 the IRA, led by Liam Lynch, attacked a party of British soldiers on their way to a Wesleyan church parade in the town. The Blackwater runs through the middle of it, and the weir is a place to watch salmon.

Fermoy: The Blackwater and the Garrison Town

Tour the Swiss Cottage at Kilcommon near Cahir, an 1810 cottage orné attributed to Regency architect John Nash

Find the thatched, curved roofline and rustic timber verandah — designed to look like a rural retreat while serving as a fashionable entertaining space

Find the original Dufour wallpapers and picture the cottage's real use — entertaining the Cahir estate's guests, not everyday living

Walk from the Swiss Cottage along the River Suir, part of the same Cahir estate grounds

A cottage orné is a rich family's idea of a peasant cottage — deliberately rustic, expensively built, and never actually lived in. The Swiss Cottage at Kilcommon near Cahir is a noted example: thatched, with a curving roofline and timber verandas on several sides, put up around 1810 and attributed to John Nash, the Regency architect who later remodelled Buckingham Palace. It belonged to the estate of Lord and Lady Cahir, who used it for entertaining, and some rooms keep their original Dufour wallpapers, said to be among the first commercially produced Parisian papers. After years of neglect it was restored from 1985 by the Irish Georgian Society, the Port Royal Foundation and Sybil Connolly, and opened as a museum in 1989. It sits in its own grounds on the River Suir.

The Swiss Cottage: An Irish Cottage Orné

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

Find the portcullis still hanging at the gate

Ask the guide to point out what Essex's guns did to the walls in 1599

Climb the keep and look down on the Suir on both sides of the island

Find out how Essex took the castle in three days in 1599

Cahir Castle, one of the largest castles in Ireland, stands on a rocky island in the river Suir. Conchobar Ua Briain, King of Thomond, began it in 1142, and in 1375 it was granted to the Butlers, who enlarged it over the next three centuries. In 1599 the Earl of Essex brought Elizabeth's army and cannon against it and took it after a three-day siege; the damage his artillery did can still be read in the stone. The original portcullis still hangs at the gate. It came to the state after 1961 and was opened by the Office of Public Works in 1971.

Cahir Castle: The Fortress on an Island in the Suir

Walk to Mahon Falls, an 80-metre cascade where the River Mahon plunges over sandstone cliffs on the Comeraghs' southern slopes

Walk in to the Coumshingaun corrie lake from Kilclooney Wood — the full ridge loop above it is a serious scramble, so judge it on the day

Compare the two Comeragh valleys — Mahon Falls' open waterfall glen against Coumshingaun's enclosed, ice-carved amphitheatre

Park at Kilclooney Wood or Kilclooney Bridge for the Coumshingaun approach, and at the signed car park off the R676 for Mahon Falls

The Comeraghs are sandstone, and the ice worked them into two completely different shapes within a few miles of each other. At Mahon Falls the river comes over the southern cliffs in an 80-metre cascade down an open glen you can walk into from the road. At Coumshingaun the ice dug a corrie instead — a lake sitting in an amphitheatre of cliffs that rise to the plateau above, one of the best known corries in Ireland. Doing both in a day shows you what a glacier does depending on which way the hill faces.

Mahon Falls and Coumshingaun: The Comeragh Corries

Book a guided tour — the only way onto the hill — and find Ail na Míreann, the Stone of the Divisions, where the provinces were said to meet

Climb to the top and count how many counties you can pick out

Walk the ring barrows and enclosures across the hill

Come at Bealtaine for the fire festival held on the hill

Uisneach sits near the geographical centre of Ireland and in mythology it is the symbolic centre of the island — the place of assembly, associated with the druids and with the festival of Bealtaine, and said to be the burial place of the Tuatha Dé Danann. On the slope lies Ail na Míreann, the Stone of the Divisions, a vast glacial boulder said to mark where the borders of all the provinces met. It is nicknamed the Cat Stone because it is supposed to look like a sitting cat. On a clear day you can see a large part of the country from the top.