Private 14-day chauffeur-driven tour
14-Day Ireland: The Whole Island, Unhurried
Two weeks is enough to see Ireland without ever feeling like you're chasing it. This is the complete circuit, down through the southeast and its harbour towns, across to Kerry and the west, and up into the empty northwest, all at a pace that leaves room to actually stop. It's a sample of how the trip usually runs, not a fixed package. Tell us what matters to you and we build the real thing around it.
Tour Itinerary
DAY 1
Dublin to Kilkenny, via the Rock of Cashel
Day 1: Highlights
We collect you in Dublin and head south. It’s an easy first day, only a short run to Kilkenny for the night, so there’s no rush about it. The road runs down to the Rock of Cashel, a cluster of medieval towers and chapels on a limestone crag that rises straight out of the plain and holds your eye long before you reach it. From there it’s a short run east to Kilkenny for the night, a compact medieval city on the River Nore, with its restored Norman castle set in riverside parkland and the round tower at St Canice’s Cathedral, one of the few in Ireland you can still climb.
DAY 2
Kilkenny to Kinsale, through Waterford
Day 2: Highlights
Heading south-east, the route reaches Waterford, the oldest city in Ireland and the home of Waterford Crystal, where you can watch the glass being cut and blown by hand. From there it carries on through Cork to Kinsale, a harbour town of narrow lanes and brightly painted houses long thought of as the food capital of the country, where you'll stay two nights.
DAY 3
Kinsale
Day 3: Highlights
A full day around Kinsale's coast. Charles Fort is a huge star-shaped 17th-century fortress guarding the mouth of the harbour, worth the walk out along the water. Beyond it lies the Old Head of Kinsale, off which the Lusitania was sunk in 1915, now marked by a signal-tower museum and a memorial garden. Nearby, the Ringfinnan Garden of Remembrance is a quiet hillside where a local nurse planted a tree for each of the firefighters lost on 11 September, a moving, little-known place to end the day.
DAY 4
Kinsale to Killarney
Day 4: Highlights
A straightforward drive west from Kinsale into Kerry, through the farmland and small towns of west Cork. You reach Killarney in the evening, your base for the next three nights.
DAY 5
The Ring of Kerry
Day 5: Highlights
A full day looping the Iveragh Peninsula, the view reinventing itself around every headland. The stops shape to you: the Kerry Bog Village and its recreated cottages, the causeway out to Valentia Island for Geokaun Mountain and the Fogher Cliffs (the Geokaun climb one for our smaller vehicles rather than the larger bus), the much-photographed viewpoints at Ladies View and Molls Gap with Torc Waterfall on the way, and the Kerry Cliffs looking out at the Skellig Islands on a clear day.
DAY 6
The Dingle Peninsula
Day 6: Highlights
The Slea Head Drive traces the edge of the Dingle Peninsula past ancient beehive stone huts and the Gallarus Oratory, a drystone church that has kept the rain out for a thousand years, out toward the most westerly point of the Irish mainland. Dingle town, a working harbour of painted shopfronts and music pubs, is worth an hour on foot, with the option of a harbour boat trip or, in spring, feeding a baby lamb on a local farm.
DAY 7
Killarney and its National Park
Day 7: Highlights
A gentler day close to base. Killarney National Park holds the Muckross estate, with its house, gardens and working farm, and Ross Castle on the lakeshore, and the Gap of Dunloe cuts a dramatic mountain pass through the hills nearby. A day to slow right down after the two big coastal drives.
DAY 8
Killarney to Galway
Day 8: Highlights
North toward the west coast, with more to make of the day than the drive. You might stop in Adare, a row of thatched cottages beside a medieval friary and one of the prettiest villages in the country, and through County Clare the day can take in the Cliffs of Moher, the limestone Burren, Bunratty Castle and Folk Park, the music village of Doolin or a working sheepdog demonstration, as many as the day allows. You reach Galway for the evening, your base for two nights.
DAY 9
Connemara
Day 9: Highlights
A full day into Connemara, the wildest stretch of the west. Kylemore Abbey sits mirrored in the lake at its feet, with walled gardens to walk in season; the day runs out to Killary Fjord, Ireland’s only true fjord, a boat cruise an option if you’d like time on the water; and the drive back threads the Inagh Valley between the Maumturk mountains and the Twelve Bens.
DAY 10
Galway to Westport
Day 10: Highlights
The road north runs through Cong, the estate village on Lough Corrib best known as the setting for The Quiet Man, then out along the stark Doolough Valley, a dark still lake held between bare slopes. The day ends in Westport, a rare planned town with a lively pub-and-music scene, where you'll be based for two nights.
DAY 11
Achill Island
Day 11: Highlights
A day out to Achill, Ireland's largest island, joined to the mainland by a bridge. The morning can begin, if you like, with a short run out to Murrisk, where Croagh Patrick rises straight from the shore of Clew Bay, the cone-shaped pilgrim mountain climbed by thousands each summer, some barefoot. From there the road turns north through Newport and Mulranny, the gateway village, and opens onto Achill's sea cliffs, blue-flag beaches and the abandoned village on the slopes of Slievemore.
DAY 12
Westport to Donegal, along the Sligo coast
Day 12: Highlights
North of Mayo the crowds thin for good. The coast road takes in Mullaghmore, a horseshoe harbour under Classiebawn Castle, and the Sligo country W.B. Yeats loved and is buried in, under the flat table of Benbulben, with the thin drop of Glencar Waterfall close by. The day carries on into Donegal town as the land grows wilder and lonelier.
DAY 13
Donegal
Day 13: Highlights
A full day in Donegal, the wildest county in the country. Donegal town sits around its old castle and harbour, but the day's real draw is Slieve League, whose sea cliffs rise close to 2,000 feet straight out of the Atlantic, among the highest in Europe and, unlike the busier Cliffs of Moher, often almost empty.
DAY 14
Home, at your own pace
Day 14: Highlights
The northwest is a long way from the main airports, so the last day is built entirely around your flight, whether that's a slow final morning or an earlier start with time in hand. We plan the timing so the end of two weeks doesn't turn into a rush.
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