Walk into the open oval court and stand in the ceremonial space

Find the burial chambers leading off the far end of the court

Work out what an open forecourt says about how these tombs were used

Look up at Benbulbin and the Dartry Mountains from the tomb

Creevykeel sits right beside the N15 at Cliffony and is one of the finest court tombs left in Ireland — a full oval forecourt open to the sky, with burial chambers leading off it, built around five and a half thousand years ago. The court is the point: these were tombs designed with an open ceremonial space at the entrance, so whatever was done here was done in front of people. It is free, unfenced and takes ten minutes off the road.

Creevykeel: One of Ireland's Finest Court Tombs

Carrowmore and Knocknarea

Six nights across Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon, from the passage tombs of Carrowmore and Carrowkeel to the royal complex at Rathcroghan, with Boyle Abbey and a coal mine on the way.

The Passage Tombs of the West: Carrowmore, Carrowkeel and Rathcroghan

Walk round Mullaghmore Head and watch the Atlantic come in

Look at Classiebawn Castle on the headland and find out who built it

Walk the harbour Palmerston built and Nimmo designed

Find out what happened off this coast in August 1979

Mullaghmore is a village on a headland in north Sligo. The 3rd Viscount Palmerston began Classiebawn Castle on the peninsula and built the stone harbour, to a design by Alexander Nimmo; his agents also oversaw the 'assisted emigration' of tenants during and after the Famine. Classiebawn later became the holiday home of Lord Mountbatten, and it was off this coast in August 1979 that he, his grandson Nicholas Knatchbull, Lady Brabourne and Paul Maxwell, a fifteen-year-old from Enniskillen in County Fermanagh who was working on the boat, were killed by an IRA bomb. Today Mullaghmore is a big-wave surfing spot: on 8 March 2012 surfers rode waves up to 15 metres high off the Head.

Mullaghmore: Big Waves and Classiebawn

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.

Benbulbin: The Table Mountain of Yeats Country

Book a guided foraging walk and meet at Buoys & Gulls Café on Bundoran's Main Street for the briefing

Hand-harvest at least three edible seaweed species along the shoreline — dulse, kelp, and carrageen moss — using the cut-not-pull technique that lets the holdfast regrow

Cook a meal using your foraged seaweed the same day

Photograph carrageen moss drying flat on rocks above the tideline, the traditional method used along this coast to prepare it for carrageen pudding

Guided seaweed foraging walks run along the Bundoran shoreline, when the tides and the operator's calendar allow, starting from Buoys & Gulls Café on Main Street. Ireland's Atlantic coast produces dulse, kelp, and carrageen moss — the last of these dried flat on coastal rocks for centuries to make traditional carrageen pudding.

Donegal Seaweed Foraging & Cooking

Join a beach yoga or SUP-yoga session with Bundoran Surf Co on Tullan Strand

Walk the 3km Rougey loop from Bundoran town to the Fairy Bridges sea stacks

At the Wishing Chair beside the Fairy Bridges, sit, tap the stone twice, and make a silent wish — tradition says you must keep it secret

From the Fairy Bridges viewpoint, pick out Slieve League's cliffs across Donegal Bay to the north and Mullaghmore Head to the south

Tullan Strand, a 2km beach on Bundoran's north side, is where Bundoran Surf Co run their surf and SUP lessons. The walk there follows the Rougey loop past the Fairy Bridges sea stacks and the Wishing Chair, a natural stone seat with its own centuries-old ritual.

Tullan Strand: Beach Yoga and the Fairy Bridges

Walk on to the Devil's Chimney after heavy rain and watch the water blow back up over the cliff in a southerly

Read The Stolen Child at the falls Yeats named in it

Walk or drive the length of Glencar Lough under the Dartry Mountains

Yeats wrote The Stolen Child in 1886 and collected it in The Wanderings of Oisin three years later, and the fairies in it call the child away to where the wandering water gushes from the hills above Glen-Car. The waterfall is still there, dropping about fifteen metres into a wooded glen at the end of a short boardwalk from the car park, A kilometre west of it is a second fall, Sruth in Aghaidh an Aird — the Devil's Chimney — at 150 metres the highest in Ireland, and its name is the point: in a southerly wind the water blows backwards, up and over the cliff edge, instead of falling. Glencar Lough runs west along the valley, the Dartry Mountains to the north and Cope's Mountain to the south.

Glencar: The Waterfall in Yeats's Stolen Child

Surf at Strandhill, the Atlantic beach below Knocknarea

From Drumcliffe, look up at Benbulben's 526m flat-topped ridge — the mountain named in Yeats' own epitaph

Find W.B. Yeats' grave in Drumcliff churchyard and read the epitaph from 'Under Ben Bulben': 'Cast a cold Eye / On Life, on Death. / Horseman, pass by.'

Find the round tower and the high cross of about 1100 beside the church, all that is left of the monastery at Drumcliff

Sligo pairs Atlantic surf with literary pilgrimage: Strandhill faces the Atlantic below Knocknarea, and W.B. Yeats is buried in Drumcliff churchyard, where his paternal great-grandfather John Yeats had been rector. Benbulbin's flat-topped 526m ridge rises behind the grave, the mountain named in the poet's own epitaph.

Drumcliff and Strandhill: Yeats' Grave Under Benbulben

Climb Castletown Mount, the Norman motte traditionally held to be Cúchulainn's Dún Dealgan

Go through the County Museum in the restored Dundalk Distillery buildings

Find An Táin Arts Centre and the epic it takes its name from

Look north into the Cooley Mountains where the Táin is set

Dún Dealgan — Dundalk — is named for the fort of Dealga, and tradition puts Cúchulainn's home at Castletown Mount just outside the town — what stands there is a Norman motte-and-bailey of about 1185, with the ruin of Byrne's Folly on top, though a ringfort is said to have been there before it, which is why the whole Cooley landscape around it is the setting for the Táin Bó Cúailnge. The town sits on the Castletown River halfway between Dublin and Belfast, seven kilometres from the border. The County Museum occupies restored buildings of the old Dundalk Distillery, and An Táin Arts Centre in the town hall is named for the epic.

Dundalk: Cúchulainn's Fort and the County Museum

Walk the Georgian main street of the only royal village in Northern Ireland

Walk up to Hillsborough Fort, built in 1650 to command the Dublin–Carrickfergus road

Walk the lake and the forest park behind the fort

Hillsborough is a planned Georgian village twelve miles from Belfast, named for Sir Moses Hill and laid out around the castle. Hillsborough Castle is the British royal family's official residence in Northern Ireland and the home of the Secretary of State, and in 2021 letters patent granted the village the prefix Royal in recognition of it. Above the village sits Hillsborough Fort, built in 1650 by Arthur Hill to command the road from Dublin to Carrickfergus and later remodelled as a Gothic folly.