Sit in the bird hides on the Lough Neagh shore and count the wildfowl

Walk the trails through reedbed, wet woodland and meadow

Come in winter when the lough is holding its biggest numbers of ducks and swans

Go through the discovery centre and find out why Lough Neagh matters to birds

Oxford Island is not an island — it is a peninsula reaching into the southern shore of Lough Neagh at Lurgan, 282 acres of it, and a National Nature Reserve because of the range of habitats packed into that: reedbed, wet woodland, meadow and open water. Lough Neagh is the largest lake in Ireland and Britain, and in winter it takes enormous numbers of wildfowl. There are bird hides along the shore and a discovery centre.

Oxford Island: The Lough Neagh Nature Reserve

Drive the orchard country around Loughgall when the blossom is out in late spring

Buy Armagh Bramleys from a grower in the orchards they came out of

Find out what Protected Geographical Indication status actually restricts

Cook something with a Bramley and see why it is a cooking apple and not an eating one

Armagh is called the Orchard County and it has the legal paperwork to back it up: Armagh Bramleys carry Protected Geographical Indication status, so the name is restricted to apples grown here. The Bramley itself came from pips a girl called Mary Ann Brailsford planted in a Nottinghamshire garden in 1809 — it is the only British cooking apple produced all year round, and it was nicknamed the King of Covent Garden. In Armagh the orchards blossom in late April and May and are picked in autumn.

The Orchard County: Armagh Bramleys

Find the high cross on its hillock at the western shore of Lough Neagh

Read the carved scriptural panels on all four faces of the cross

Look out over Lough Neagh, the largest lake in Ireland and Britain, from beside the cross

Find out about the magic cow the place is named for

Ard Bó means high cow, and the name comes from a legend that the monastery here was built with mortar mixed from the milk of a magic cow that came up out of Lough Neagh. St Colman of Ardboe founded it in the 6th century, and the only thing left of it is the high cross — 9th or 10th century, standing on a small hillock right at the western shore of the lough, and one of the finest examples of the Irish high cross anywhere in Ulster.

Ardboe: The High Cross Built From a Magic Cow's Milk

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.

Royal Hillsborough: The Georgian Village and the Fort

Find Dragonstone and the destroyed throne room

Go through Castle Black and out Beyond the Wall

Find out how a Banbridge linen mill became a Game of Thrones studio

The Linen Mill Studios at Banbridge were converted from a failed linen mill and became one of the filming bases for Game of Thrones. The mill now holds the Game of Thrones Studio Tour, an official HBO-licensed attraction and one of the largest indoor visitor attractions on the island of Ireland, about thirty minutes from Belfast and ninety from Dublin. The sets, props and costumes of the series are laid out to walk through as Winterfell, Castle Black, Beyond the Wall, Dragonstone, King's Landing and the destroyed throne room.

Game of Thrones Studio Tour: The Linen Mill at Banbridge

Walk the parkland and find Gosford Castle among the trees — it is private apartments now, so it is a view, not a visit

Walk the walled garden and the arboretum in the demesne

Look for the deer, and find the gardens Swift helped lay out

Walk into Markethill, the estate town at the gates

James VI and I granted the Achesons land here in 1610 at the very start of the Plantation of Ulster, and two centuries later Archibald Acheson, 2nd Earl of Gosford, had the London architect Thomas Hopper build him an enormous castle in the Norman revival style. The demesne became a forest park in 1958 and runs to 240 hectares of woodland and open parkland, with a walled garden, an arboretum and deer. Jonathan Swift visited Gosford and had a hand in laying out the gardens.

Gosford: Norman Revival Castle in 240 Hectares

Walk the Armagh Astropark, a scale model of the universe laid out in the observatory grounds

See where Thomas Romney Robinson invented the cup anemometer

Take a show at the Armagh Planetarium next door

Find out about the 224 years of unbroken weather records, kept here since 1794

Archbishop Richard Robinson founded the Armagh Observatory in 1789 and it has been working ever since. One of its directors, Thomas Romney Robinson, invented the cup anemometer here — the spinning cups still used to measure wind speed on weather stations everywhere. It has also kept the weather: in 2018 the World Meteorological Organisation gave it a Centennial Weather Station Award for 224 years of unbroken records going back to 1794. The observatory sits in landscaped grounds called the Astropark, laid out as a scale model of the universe, with the planetarium beside it.

Armagh Observatory: Astronomy Since 1789

Climb Arderin to 527m, the highest point of the Slieve Blooms

Stand on the Laois–Offaly county line running across the summit

Try on a clear day to make out how far you can see in each direction

Walk in from the Glenbarrow trailhead at the far end of the range, and take in Glenbarrow Falls if you have the day for it

Arderin is Ard Éireann — the height of Ireland — and at 527 metres it is the highest point of the Slieve Bloom Mountains, standing on the Laois–Offaly border at the south-western end of the range. The name is the interesting part: this is nowhere near the highest mountain in the country, but it stands alone in the middle of a flat island, so from the top you can see an extraordinary distance in every direction, and the traditional claim is that on a clear day you can pick out high ground on both coasts from the top.

Arderin: The Height of Ireland

Find Fedlim Ó Conchobair's effigial slab in the niche in the north-east corner

Look at the carved figures on the tomb panel beneath the effigy

Work out what it meant for a Gaelic king to found a Dominican house in 1253

Walk between the abbey and the castle at opposite ends of the town — the castle went up in 1269, four years after Fedlim was buried

Fedlim Ó Conchobair, King of Connacht, founded a Dominican priory at Roscommon in 1253, and when he died in 1265 he was buried in it. The effigial slab that covered his tomb is still there, set in a niche in the north-east corner of the church — a carved medieval king lying in a roofless ruin in the middle of an ordinary town, with the castle he would have known at the other end of it.