Ireland and Northern Ireland Itinerary: An 18-Day Clockwise Journey Across the Island

Most visitors see Ireland in pieces: a long weekend in Dublin, a drive around Kerry, perhaps a day trip north to the Giant’s Causeway. Taken that way, the island reads as a string of postcards. Travelled in one continuous clockwise loop, from the Georgian streets of Dublin down through Munster, up the Atlantic west and across the border into Northern Ireland, it reads as a single argument about land, language, faith and memory. This Ireland and Northern Ireland itinerary follows that loop as Odyssey’s Treasures of Ireland small group tour travels it over 18 days, and explains why the order in which you meet these places changes what they mean.

Why an all-island, clockwise route changes the story

Ireland is a small island, only a little larger than Tasmania, and it is tempting to think that the order of travel does not matter much. It does. Beginning in Dublin puts you first in the city that the Vikings founded, the Anglo-Normans fortified and the British administered for seven centuries. Moving south and west, you travel away from that centre of power and into the regions where older Ireland survived longest: the royal seat of the Munster kings, the Gaelic-speaking peninsulas of Kerry, the stone forts of the Aran Islands.

Turning north, the route climbs through Sligo and Donegal, where the Irish language and the cottage weaving trade held on into the twentieth century, before crossing quietly into Northern Ireland at Derry. It ends in Belfast, the one city on the island that the Industrial Revolution remade completely. Read in that sequence, the journey moves from early Christian learning, through conquest and survival, to the shipyards and the political murals of the modern north. The landscape changes alongside the history: granite valleys in Wicklow, limestone pavement in the Burren, Atlantic sandstone at Moher, and finally the black basalt of the Antrim coast.

This guide is not a general introduction to the country. For that, Odyssey’s practical guide to learning about Ireland covers the essentials, and the Ireland’s Gems overview gathers the island’s best-known highlights in one place. What follows is the route itself, region by region, in the order the tour travels it.

Dublin and Wicklow: city, gardens and literary heritage

The first four days are based in Dublin, which gives you time to settle in before the coach starts moving. The opening morning of sightseeing is at Trinity College, founded under a charter from Elizabeth I in 1592, where a graduate leads the group through the grounds before the visit to the Book of Kells. The manuscript was made around the year 800, most likely begun on the Scottish island of Iona and finished at Kells in County Meath, and it is the clearest surviving evidence of how central Irish monasteries were to the intellectual life of early medieval Europe.

A guided tour of the city takes in Dublin Castle, the seat of British rule until 1922, and St Patrick’s Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift served as dean and is buried. A literary walking tour fills in the city of Joyce, Wilde, Yeats and Beckett, and for those with the energy there may be a chance to see a performance at the Abbey Theatre, the national theatre that Yeats and Lady Gregory co-founded in 1904. An evening lecture on Irish history at the hotel gives the whole journey a frame to hang on, and Odyssey’s longer history of Ireland is useful reading before you fly.

Day four leaves the city for County Wicklow. Powerscourt Estate and its terraced gardens sit on the site of a thirteenth-century castle held by the le Poer family, from whom the estate takes its name. The Palladian house was designed by Richard Castle in the 1730s, and the Italianate terraces, laid out in the nineteenth century, fall away towards the cone of the Great Sugar Loaf mountain. In the afternoon the group continues to Glendalough, the “valley of the two lakes”, where St Kevin founded a hermitage in the sixth century that grew into one of the most important monastic settlements in Ireland. The round tower, the roofless cathedral and the small stone-roofed church known as St Kevin’s Kitchen stand in a wooded glacial valley that still feels removed from the world.

How much walking does the Treasures of Ireland tour involve?

Expect three to five hours of physical activity a day, with up to around eight kilometres of walking, some of it on uneven ground. The tour is rated Level 2, Moderate: travellers need to carry their own luggage and manage stairs comfortably. The more demanding days are those with exposed sites on rough paths, notably Dún Aonghasa on the Aran Islands and the clifftops of the west, while the Dublin and Galway days are largely on paved streets.

Munster: medieval royal sites, castles and Atlantic peninsulas

On day five the route crosses the midlands into Munster, the southern province that once had its own kings. The first stop is the Rock of Cashel, a limestone outcrop rising out of the Tipperary plain that served as the seat of the Munster kings until 1101, when King Muirchertach Ua Briain gave it to the Church. What survives is a cluster of grey stone buildings on the summit: a complete round tower, the roofless thirteenth-century cathedral, and Cormac’s Chapel, consecrated in 1134 and the finest Romanesque building in the country.

The afternoon brings the group to Blarney Castle, the MacCarthy tower house built in the 1440s, before the night in Cork. Kissing the Blarney Stone is entirely optional. It involves climbing a narrow spiral stair to the battlements and leaning backwards over a gap in the parapet, with staff to hold you, and plenty of travellers are content to enjoy the view from the top and the gardens below.

Days six and seven are spent in County Kerry. The first is a circuit of the Ring of Kerry with a local guide and storyteller, a loop of around 180 kilometres through Killorglin, Cahersiveen, Waterville and Sneem, with mountains on one side and the Atlantic on the other. The evening is devoted to Irish music and dance. The tour’s highlights include a performance at Siamsa Tíre, Ireland’s National Folk Theatre in Tralee, which has spent more than half a century turning rural song, dance and storytelling into staged theatre. [VERIFY: the day-by-day itinerary for day 6 currently lists Celtic Steps at Killarney Racecourse instead.]

The following day the group drives out along the Dingle Peninsula, the most westerly point of the Irish mainland and one of the densest concentrations of ancient monuments anywhere in Europe. The archaeology of the Dingle Peninsula ranges from Iron Age ringforts and corbelled stone beehive huts to the Gallarus Oratory, a small church built entirely of dry stone, shaped like an upturned boat and still watertight after many centuries. At Dún Chaoin the Blasket Centre tells the story of the Great Blasket Island, abandoned in 1953, whose few hundred Irish-speaking inhabitants produced a body of autobiography, from Tomás Ó Criomhthain and Peig Sayers among others, that is now part of the national literary canon.

The west: the Burren, the Cliffs of Moher and Connemara

Day eight is one of the longest and most varied of the tour. It begins at Bunratty Castle, a fifteenth-century tower house on the Shannon estuary, and its Folk Park, which reconstructs rural Irish life of the last century in farmhouses, cottages and a village street. From there the coach crosses the Burren, a plateau of bare grey limestone pavement split into blocks by deep fissures, where Arctic, Alpine and Mediterranean plants grow side by side. The Poulnabrone portal tomb, a capstone balanced on upright slabs, has stood on the pavement for more than five thousand years.

The day’s high point is the Cliffs of Moher, which run for about 14 kilometres along the Clare coast and rise to just over 200 metres. The geology of the Cliffs of Moher repays a moment’s attention: the bands you see in the cliff face are layers of sandstone, siltstone and shale laid down in a river delta around 320 million years ago, now cut back by the Atlantic into one of the most photographed coastlines in Europe. The group overnights near Galway before heading out to the islands.

On the return from Inis Mór on day eleven, the route passes through Connemara. Kylemore Abbey, built between 1867 and 1871 by the wealthy Manchester businessman and politician Mitchell Henry for his wife Margaret, stands on a lake shore beneath the mountains and has been home to a Benedictine community since 1920; lunch is included here, with time in the Victorian walled garden. Connemara National Park, nearly 3,000 hectares of mountain, bog and heath, follows. Day twelve is an expert-led walk of Galway itself, taking in the cathedral, the Spanish Arch of 1584 and surviving sections of the medieval city wall, with a free afternoon in a city known for its live traditional music.

The Aran Islands: two nights on Inis Mór

Few itineraries give the Aran Islands more than a day trip. This one gives Inis Mór, the largest of the three, two nights. The ferry leaves early from Rossaveal on day nine, and a local historian meets the group on the island. Irish is still the everyday language here, and the island’s thousands of kilometres of drystone walls, built from the limestone cleared to make fields, enclose a landscape where farming soil was once made by hand from sand and seaweed.

The highlight of day ten is Dún Aonghasa, a stone fort of concentric drystone walls whose innermost enclosure ends abruptly at the edge of a sheer cliff, about 100 metres above the Atlantic. Its origins go back to around 1100 BC, and a band of upright stone spikes outside the walls, the chevaux-de-frise, was designed to break up any attack on foot. Elsewhere on the island, the group explores the Seven Churches of Aran, an early Christian pilgrimage site whose ruined churches, carved cross slabs and graves show how the island became a destination for monks and pilgrims from the mainland. The afternoon is free, and dinner that evening is in a local pub.

How demanding is the walk to Dún Aonghasa?

It is the most physically demanding visit on the tour: a walk of roughly a kilometre uphill from the visitor centre, on a rough path that becomes bare, uneven rock near the top. Sturdy shoes with a good grip are essential, and the path is slow going in wet weather. There are no railings at the cliff edge, so take your time and stay well back. Travellers who prefer not to make the climb can explore the lower parts of the island with the group or at their own pace.

Sligo and Donegal: Gaeltacht landscape and textile tradition

Day thirteen turns the route north. In Sligo, a lecture at the Yeats Society introduces the poet’s connection to the county, and the group then visits Drumcliffe churchyard, where Yeats was reburied in 1948 beneath the flat-topped, deeply ridged bulk of Ben Bulben. The night is spent in Donegal town.

Donegal is the least visited of the counties on this route and, for many travellers, the most memorable. It is also the county where the Irish language is strongest: the Donegal Gaeltacht, the officially Irish-speaking districts that stretch across much of the county’s west, is one of the largest in the country, and the drive out to Slieve League runs towards its south-western edge, where Irish is still heard in shops and pubs as well as seen on road signs. Day fourteen begins with a heritage walk of Donegal town and a guided visit to Donegal Castle, the fifteenth-century stronghold of the O’Donnell chieftains, later extended with a Jacobean manor house after the Ulster plantation.

The group then visits Magee, a Donegal town firm since 1866, for a weaving demonstration. Donegal tweed is known for the small flecks of bright colour woven through its earthy base, a look that grew out of the hillside colours of the county and the dyes its home weavers could make from plants. The afternoon drive reaches Slieve League, whose cliffs rise around 600 metres from the sea and are among the highest in Europe, before returning over the hairpin bends of the Glengesh Pass.

Derry and the crossing into Northern Ireland

On day fifteen the route crosses into Northern Ireland, and most travellers will not notice the moment it happens. There are no border posts, no checks and no change in the landscape. The currency changes from euro to pound sterling, the road signs switch from kilometres to miles, and that is all you see. For a history that turned on that border for most of the twentieth century, its invisibility today is itself worth reflecting on.

The group spends the day in Derry, also called Londonderry, with an expert-led walk around its city walls. Built between 1613 and 1619 to protect the Protestant settlers of the Ulster plantation, they form the most complete circuit of town walls in Ireland and were never breached, even during the siege of 1689. Walking the roughly 1.5-kilometre circuit gives views down into the Bogside and across the River Foyle, and a free afternoon allows time for the city’s museums.

Do Australians need anything to cross into Northern Ireland?

Yes: although there are no checks at the land border, Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, and Australian passport holders need a UK Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) before they cross. The UK government has confirmed that the requirement applies to the land border even though nobody checks it there. Apply online well before departure, and check the current rules for your own passport when you book. Odyssey’s guide to travelling in Ireland covers money, power plugs and the other country-level basics.

Belfast and Northern Ireland: industrial history, public memory and coast

Day sixteen follows the North Coast to Belfast. The first stop is the Bushmills distillery, which traces its licence to distil to 1608, before the group reaches the Giant’s Causeway, the coastline of around 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, most of them six-sided, that formed as a thick lava flow cooled and cracked some 50 to 60 million years ago. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986, and the geology makes better sense than the legend of Finn McCool once you have seen how the columns step down into the sea.

Belfast is the last base, for two nights. Day seventeen begins with a lecture from a local expert, followed in the afternoon by a black taxi tour of the political murals of Belfast. The drivers are often from the communities whose histories the murals record, and their commentary on the Falls and Shankill roads, the peace walls and the decades since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement is one of the most valuable hours on the tour.

The final full day ends in the Titanic Quarter, where the slipways of the Harland & Wolff shipyard launched the Titanic in May 1911. The yard, founded in 1861, was for decades the largest in the world and the economic engine of Protestant east Belfast; its two great gantry cranes, Samson and Goliath, still stand over the harbour. A visit to the Titanic Belfast exhibition is followed by a farewell dinner, and the tour concludes after breakfast on day eighteen.

When is the best time to travel this route?

Spring and early autumn, which is why the tour departs in April and September. April brings lambs in the fields, gorse in flower and the first of the Burren’s spring flowers, with long, lengthening evenings. September is usually calmer than high summer at popular sites such as the Cliffs of Moher and the Giant’s Causeway, and the sea is at its warmest. Ireland’s weather is changeable in every month, so whichever departure you choose, pack waterproof layers rather than relying on the forecast.

Is this route suitable for solo travellers?

Yes, and many Odyssey travellers join on their own. A solo room option is available on every departure, and the current price is shown under the tour’s dates and prices tab. With a group of no more than 14, dinners are typically shared around one table, so dining alone is never a concern, and the long days on the coach, the island nights on Inis Mór and the pub dinner there tend to turn strangers into travelling companions quickly.

A journey back, as well as a journey through

For a great many Australian travellers, an Ireland itinerary is not only a tour of somewhere new. More than two million Australians named Irish ancestry in the 2021 census, and the story of the Irish diaspora in Australia, from convict transports and assisted emigrants to the Famine orphan girls, means that the townlands, parish records and surnames of the west and south are often family history as much as national history. Travelling the whole island, rather than one corner of it, makes it far more likely that the journey passes close to where your own story began.

Eighteen days is long enough to see Ireland and Northern Ireland as one island with one deeply tangled past, rather than two countries glimpsed in passing. By the time the group sits down to its farewell dinner in Belfast, the Book of Kells, the Rock of Cashel, the forts of Aran and the murals of the Falls Road have stopped being separate sights and become chapters of the same story. If that is the Ireland you would like to see, the Treasures of Ireland tour travels it with a small group of 6 to 14 like-minded travellers, an Odyssey Program Leader and local guides at every stage of the route.