Walk the full circuit of the curtain wall around three acres of enclosure

Count the tower houses set along and within the walls

Walk into the priory church and the cloister at the centre

Come at dusk or early morning, when there will be nobody there but the sheep

Geoffrey FitzRobert founded Kells Priory around 1193, and what he and his successors built is one of the largest medieval monuments in Ireland — over three acres enclosed by a curtain wall with a series of medieval tower houses set along and inside it, which is why locals have always called it the Seven Castles. It looks more like a fortified town than a priory. It is unstaffed, unticketed and open at all hours, in a field on the King's River with sheep grazing between the walls.

Kells Priory: Seven Towers and Three Acres of Wall

Jerpoint and Kells

Six nights across the medieval south-east: Kilkenny's walled Medieval Mile, the carved cloister at Jerpoint and the three walled acres of Kells, Waterford's Viking Triangle, and Vinegar Hill above the Slaney.

Medieval Ireland: Kilkenny, Jerpoint and the Viking Triangle

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

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

Tour Kilkenny Castle and its Picture Gallery, remodelled in the 1860s to hang the Butler family's paintings

Walk the Medieval Mile from the Castle to St Canice's Cathedral, and climb the 9th-century round tower — one of only three medieval round towers left in Ireland you can still climb

Visit Rothe House on Parliament Street, a merchant's townhouse halfway along the Medieval Mile

Find the Black Abbey, a Dominican friary founded in 1225, just off the Medieval Mile

Kilkenny kept its medieval street plan when other Irish cities lost theirs, and the Medieval Mile runs the length of it from the castle to the cathedral. The castle itself was turned from a Norman fortress into a house, its Long Gallery remodelled in the 1860s to hang the Butler family's pictures. At the far end, St Canice's has a 9th-century round tower that is one of only three medieval round towers in Ireland you can still climb. In between are Rothe House, a merchant's townhouse on Parliament Street, and the Black Abbey, a Dominican friary founded in 1225.

The Medieval Mile: Kilkenny From Castle to Cathedral

On the guided tour of Dunmore Cave, find the chambers where the human remains were recovered, and where a hoard of 43 silver and bronze pieces was buried around 970

In the cave's largest chamber, stand beneath the Market Cross, a cross-shaped calcite column over 5.8 metres high, the finest formation in the cave

At Kyteler's Inn find the plaque to Dame Alice Kyteler, convicted of witchcraft in 1324 — accused of poisoning four husbands, and gone before sentence was passed

Note on the same plaque that Petronella de Meath, Kyteler's maid, was flogged and burned in her place in 1324 — the first person burned for witchcraft in Ireland; the inn takes its name and its site from her house

Dunmore Cave near Ballyfoyle holds one of the most violent events in Irish recorded history: in 928 AD, Viking raiders massacred people sheltering inside, killing around 1,000 according to the Annals of the Four Masters. Archaeologists recovered the remains of dozens of people, mostly women and children — and, separately, a hoard of 43 silver and bronze items buried in the cave around 970, some forty years after the attack. In Kilkenny city, Kyteler's Inn on St. Kieran Street was the home of Dame Alice Kyteler, convicted of witchcraft in 1324 — the first such conviction in Ireland.

Kilkenny: Cave of the Dead and the Witch's Inn

Tour the Smithwick's Experience and learn the 300-year brewing history on the abbey site

Visit the Kilkenny Design Centre and browse Irish-made work

Find one craft piece made in Kilkenny and buy it directly from the maker if possible

Kilkenny has been Ireland's craft capital for decades. The Smithwick's Experience sits on the original St Francis Abbey brewery site. The Kilkenny Design Centre is in the former castle stables. Both are genuine, not tourist traps.

Kilkenny Craft & Smithwick's

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 the length of Curracloe Strand and Ballinesker Beach

Stand where the D-Day landing sequence of Saving Private Ryan was filmed in 1997

Walk the boardwalks through the dune system behind the beach

Swim off the strand and work out why it doubled for Normandy

Ballinesker Beach and Curracloe Strand stood in for Omaha Beach in the opening of Saving Private Ryan — filming began on 27 June 1997 and ran for two months, and the village had to be connected to three-phase electricity to make it possible. The same strand played the Irish beach in Brooklyn. Without the films it is simply a long dune-backed Wexford beach eight kilometres from the town, which is the better reason to go.

Curracloe: The Beach That Played Omaha

Walk the Benbulbin Forest loop under the northern cliffs

Look at the flat top and work out how a plateau became a table

Find out about the arctic-alpine plants on the cliff ledges — fringed sandwort grows here and nowhere else in Ireland, and the ledges themselves are unstable and out of bounds

Visit Yeats's grave at Drumcliffe in the mountain's shadow

Benbulbin is 526 metres of flat-topped limestone standing over the Sligo plain, and its shape is the record of an ice age: it was a plateau, and the glaciers cut it away on every side until only this table was left standing above the ice as a nunatak. Its flat-topped profile is one of the most recognisable mountain outlines in Ireland. Yeats is buried in its shadow at Drumcliffe, and in the old story it is where Diarmaid was killed by the boar while Gráinne waited.