A craic, castle and Guinness-filled road trip through Ireland

”The weather,” says our guide Liz Warner, “is the main topic of conversation here in Ireland.” Indeed, only that morning, in The Irish Times, there is a headline that reads: “Forty shades of green meets 50 shades of grey – a typical Irish summer”.

This does not bode well for our Icons of Ireland coach tour but, apart from one slightly drizzly afternoon wandering around a horse stud and Japanese garden in Kildare, we are blessed with near-perfect weather. Forty shades of green meets one shade of blue sky.

Dublin at night – and the craic is mighty.Credit: iStock

And why not? Ireland has more saints than you can poke a stick at – from Abban of Corbmaic to seventh century Wasnulf – so the occasional tiny miracle is to be welcomed, so it is.

We first meet Warner when we take our seats in Dublin’s elegant three-star Belvedere hotel, and she takes us through what’s going to be happening on the tour.

From Dublin we’ll head to Kilkenny, Cobh (pronounced “cove”), Cork, the Cliffs of Moher, and Galway before landing back to Dublin full to the gills with Guinness and Irish stew (though that might just be me).

Warner, who is Cobh born and bred, proves to be an effervescent and entertaining guide, with an encyclopedic knowledge of her home country, a wicked sense of humour, and a beautiful Celtic lilt to her voice that makes even the most prosaic sentence sound like poetry.

“We’ll be grand,” she says. “It’ll be grand. That’s our favourite word here. We’re very much glass-half-full people. And the craic is mighty, too.”

Aaaah, the craic. There’s a kind of magic in the air in Ireland – it’s in the accent, in the music in the pubs, in the poetry and prose of Wilde, Joyce, Yeats and Shaw, it’s in the myths and legends of this Emerald Isle, in the little fairy grottoes that pepper the countryside, and in the rain that’s part of the national psyche.

But more than anywhere else, it’s in the craic, that impalpable blend of conversation and laughter and dance and music – all washed down with a cry of “Slainte″⁣ and a tipple or two of whatever takes your fancy.

Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan pinned it down in August this year when talking to American funnyman Bill Burr for his podcast: “We were so downtrodden, our only refuge was the spoken word, really, and music, and drink... we’re good at talking, and we love laughing, and we love music and drinking and singing and crying and fighting.

“We had no choice. Where does spirit come out when you’ve no money? When you have nothing, what do you do? Someone says, look, I’ve made this drink from rain and tears and old potatoes, let’s f***ing drink it and see what happens. And then somebody would make a fiddle out of an old cat, and that was our culture for 800 years.”

And it’s a culture that you could argue reaches its apotheosis in Dublin’s Temple Bar, the bustling area on the south side of the Liffey River which today is renowned for its nightlife. It’s to there that we walk on our first night for an evening of food, an exhibition of Irish dancing and the first of many pints of Guinness (though that might have just been me).

Kilkenny Castle… “part medieval castle, part French chateau, and part Victorian home”.Credit: Getty Images

The first full day of touring begins with a trip to Trinity College library and the renowned Book of Kells, after which we head for a guided walking tour of Dublin Castle. Like Kilkenny Castle, which we visit the next day, this is less a castle and more of a stately home but its position in the history of the Republic of Ireland cannot be understated.

Built originally as a motte-and-bailey castle on the highest point of central Dublin, it was the seat of the British government’s administration until 1922 when it was handed over to the Irish Republican hero Michael Collins as head of the newly formed Provisional Government.

It’s interesting to note, given the egregious treatment of the Irish people by the ruling British over the centuries, that the statue of Lady Justice over the gate to the inner courtyard faces inwards to the castle with (unusually) her back to the people – a state of affairs which gave rise to the ditty: “The Statue of Justice, mark well her station, her face to the castle and her arse to the nation.”

From Dublin we head to Kilkenny for yet another Guinness-fuelled dinner (though that might just have been me), and a guided tour of the low, grey bulk of Kilkenny Castle. Part medieval castle, part French chateau, and part Victorian home, it is, says our guide, more Downton Abbey than Game of Thrones: “A castle on the outside, a family home inside.”

Jerpoint Abbey, County Kilkenny, was founded in the second half of the 12th century.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Not that many family homes have a rose garden in the shape of the Celtic cross, an Italian marble wake table (to display dead family members), and a gigantic set of prehistoric antlers looming over the entrance hall.

This wonderful curiosity was dug out of an Irish bog in the 19th century and is from an extinct species of Irish elk (megaloceros giganteus) which lived here more than 10,000 years ago and is said to be one of the largest deer that ever lived.

There is also time for a leisurely poke around the town before we have to head back to the bus. Indeed, one of the plus sides to the seemingly jam-packed itinerary is the amount of “free” time built into it.

The harbour town of Cobh in County Cork.Credit: Getty Images

In the ensuing days we visit colourful Cobh, the small harbour town on the south coast which was the Titanic’s last port of call in 1912 before its fateful voyage; Jerpoint Abbey (established in 1180 and famous for its remarkable stone carvings), and we travel to Glengariff for a ferry to the unexpectedly enchanting and beautiful gardens of Garnish Island. We gaze at several groups of nonchalant seals along the way and are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a white-tailed sea eagle.

Cobh, by the way, was also the last place 40,000 Irish men and women saw before being sent to Australia as convicts.

Two nights and one whole day in Cork enable us to visit the lip-smacking food cornucopia of the English Markets, the main shopping centre of St Patrick’s Street; Fin Barre’s spectacular cathedral, and the Butter Museum (surprisingly fascinating). We also scoff down a perfectly lovely afternoon tea in Lafayette’s, the charming Parisian-style brasserie in Cork’s Imperial Hotel.

And then it’s on to Galway via the spectacular Cliffs of Moher and a gentle scenic cruise along the Shannon River and Lough Derg Lake at Ballina.

The Cliffs of Moher on the Wild Atlantic Way, County Clare.Credit: Getty Images

Standing on the top deck of the small ship, complimentary Irish coffee in hand, watching the lush lakeside topography slip by, the 40 shades of green headline begins to make sense. For it’s not just the destinations – the dainty villages, the fairytale stone bridges, the pubs, the narrow streets, old mills, grazing cattle and castles – that make the tour, it’s very much the gentle, rolling grandeur of the lush green countryside in between that seduces the eyes and calms the soul.

Galway, though, is very much an antidote to that. A busy, buzzy city festooned with bars and pubs and restaurants, it sits astride the River Corrib and is famous for being the festival capital of Ireland, with an average of 122 festivals and events staged every year.

Festival city… Galway.Credit: Getty Images

In my free time during the day, I eschew the bright-lights, big-city approach and take myself off along the bleak, seaweed-covered coast to a causeway that seemed to lead to an island topped with a small lighthouse (decommissioned in 1977 after 160 years).

This one-kilometre causeway was built in 1999 to connect Mutton Island (sheep once grazed here) to the mainland. As causeways go, it’s fairly unprepossessing, but the views back to the city and the plethora of seabird life along the way make it worth the effort. Sadly, the island and the lighthouse aren’t accessible because it’s been taken over by a sewage treatment plant.

On the way back to Dublin (where a tasting tour of the Jameson whisky distillery awaits) we stop at the Irish National Stud and Japanese Gardens in Kildare. Normally not one to have anything to do with horses (the last one I rode got stuck in reverse gear), this turns out to be one of the highlights of the tour.

THE DETAILS

THE TOUR
Bunnik Tours runs small-group tours for a maximum of 20 people. The Icons of Ireland tour for 2025 has been renamed “A Tale of Two Irelands” and begins in Dublin and ends in Belfast. Prices for the 12-day tour (maximum 16 people) start at $7795 a person, twin share. This includes accommodation, tips, sightseeing, breakfast, one lunch and three evening meals (including group welcome and farewell dinners). See bunniktours.com.au

The writer was a guest of Bunnik Tours.