Dublin to Dingle and back

harrper	31 Dec 18:14
Joined: 31 Dec 2011 Posts: 1 Bike:	Hi everyone, I'm new here :) I'm trying to plan a cycle tour from Dublin to Dingle and back for next year (although I wouldn't mind stretching the distance out and traveling around the entire coast), and was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers and/or best routes to take? I'm from the states, and have never been to Ireland before, so I'm very unaware of roads, places to stay, etc. I'm thinking of doing this possibly in the spring or fall months, depending on which has better weather. I would like to save some money by being able to camp along the way as much as I can - is that a possibility? I would also like to stay at some hostels or B&Bs to get a shower in every other day or so. Any advice (and photos!) would be great. Thanks :) Catherine

harrper

31 Dec 18:14

Joined: 31 Dec 2011

Posts: 1

Bike:

Hi everyone, I'm new here :)

I'm trying to plan a cycle tour from Dublin to Dingle and back for next year (although I wouldn't mind stretching the distance out and traveling around the entire coast), and was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers and/or best routes to take? I'm from the states, and have never been to Ireland before, so I'm very unaware of roads, places to stay, etc.

I'm thinking of doing this possibly in the spring or fall months, depending on which has better weather. I would like to save some money by being able to camp along the way as much as I can - is that a possibility? I would also like to stay at some hostels or B&Bs to get a shower in every other day or so.

Any advice (and photos!) would be great.

Thanks :)
Catherine

john.lumley	31 Dec 22:17
Joined: 25 Dec 2011 Posts: 7 Bike: My Profile	Dear Catherine, here is an itinerary that I made up for a cyclist from Croatia, which follows an interesting route from Dublin to Galway. His route went around Ireland twice as he wanted to cycle 3000km and Ireland simply isnt that big! You can get a train back from Galway or cycle to Tralee or Killarney from Dingle and get a train , if you want to finish up there. I've also suggest a few things to do and the odd eccentric book (Flan O'Brien - "The third policeman") although if you you prefer Romantic Irish Fiction you could try Edna O'Briens "The County Girls" or "Dancing at Lughnasa" to get a literary flavour of Ireland before you come. You can purchase maps in advance by mail order from Stanfords of London or the Cycle Tourists Club (UK) www.ctc.org.uk OR Ordnance Survey Ireland www.osi.ie (v.detailed large scale maps and aerial photographs only) or Eason Online Bookshop http://www.easons.com/ (Ireland holiday map (East & South) 7.50 Euros each + p&p.) Easter is the best time of the year as the weather is quite unreliable generally especially in the west & North-west of Ireland even in July. Ireland is shaped rather like an irregular saucer with the rugged high land around the coast, with especially rugged areas in the south west of County Cork, County Kerry, County Clare, County Galway, Mayo, Sligo and Donegal. In the West of Ireland you will find vast empty spaces of blanket bogs fed by over 250 days of rain every year punctuated by small villages and towns with brightly painted houses, but not quite as wild as the highlands of Scotland, as the fields are stony and the inhabitants had to build miles of stone walls plucked from the fields, which gives the landscape a special intimate character, a gleaming greenness regulated by grey limestone walls, hence its name “the emerald isle”. Ireland has a dense network of (mostly) metalled minor roads often surrounded by tall uncut hedges and full of mysterious ancient forts and castles and ruins and is still a very rural country, slightly chaotic place. One can avoid main roads altogether these are without exception designated “N” or National Route only 2 routes are designated as European routes the Dublin to Cork and Dublin to Belfast which are the busiest and are now mostly motorway, so best avoided. A word of caution about Irelands drinking culture, some people still drink and drive, so you are best off not cycling on rural roads after 11pm on any night as this can be a dangerous time, as this is when the pubs close, if people are even a little drunk and driving a car and over confident about their driving abilities/ speed/ reactions etc accidents are more likely. All the signs in the country have recently been changed to Kilometres but when thinking about directions most(older) people still think in miles. You said that you wanted to do a tour of 3000 kilometres, but as Ireland is only about 450 Km from North to South you might have to go around it several times to accomplish this distance. The route that I describe is probably about 1500-2000 km (I’m guessing) as it goes right around the whole coastline and does a couple of loops across the north of the country and loops back into the midlands and the Slieve Bloom mountains to finish back in Dublin. The most beautiful areas are unsurprisingly, the most popular with tourists, but you don’t have to stay there if you don’t want. The N70 is called “The Ring of Kerry” and can get as crowded as the Amalfi coast in Italy or the Dalmation Coast but I have steered a course away from it but still seeing all the mountains that people go to see in Kerry. Fly into Dublin ask for Airport bus to Greystones to get you about 30 kms out of the city (about £5). Cycle into the hills to Glendalough, ancient monastic site with round tower and ancient but tiny church and scenic Valley then Laragh, Rathdrum,, Tinahealy, Bunclody, Kiltealy, Borris, Kilkenny (Castle, pubs, elegant architecture etc) Ballinagarry,Killenade/ Cashel (Ancient Church site on dramatic Rock, site of infamous massacre by the English in 16th Century when they locked the people into the church and burnt it down , nice place to have a cup of tea at the cake shop in the town. Take N8 to Mitchellstown, N73 Mallow, N20 Blarney (famous castle, climb up to the top, lean over backwards, holding a rail on the outside of the top of the tower and kiss the Blarney Stone – supposed to give you “the gift of the gab” that is non stop talking! , something most Irish people have already. Cork is a marvellous place, but if you want to give cities a miss you can head to Kinsale on the coast instead on N71 and R605 Kinsale is very scenic and has a castle, the Spanish landed an army here in the 16th Century hoping to invade England from there, so its ancient fortifications weren’t for nothing. Take R600 to Timoleague, Clonakilty, Roscarberry, Skibbereen, Skull, Mizzen Head (most southerly point in Ireland) then take R591 to Bantry and the lovely Bantry Bay and Bantry House take N71 to Glengarriff take the R572 to Adrigole an turn right over the Tim Healy Pass (just for a bit of exercise and a nice view of the coast!) R574 and R571 to Kenmare then take N72 to Killarney over another pass (see Mucross House and the beautiful Loch Lene then go through Killarney and take the N72 (R562) for Killorglin and turn left at Beaufort (You can see the magnificent McGillacudddys Reeks, highest mountains in Ireland, and the tallest mountain is called Carrontouhill go past Kate Kearney Cottage, a tourist trap and head over the famous Gap of Dunloe, an un-surfaced road with grades of 25% used in most of the amateur and professional cycle tours of Ireland ) There is a youth hostel at the bottom of this road that you can recover at, though I suspect that you’re much fitter than I am and wont need to! Head south away from the “Reeks”, west on the R568 for 1 mile and right on a minor road towards Boheeshil, Bealalaw Bridge, Lisatinnig Bridge,Knockanaden Cross, Coonduff, left onto N70 to Derryeen, then Ballinskelligs and Climb Bolus Mountain (409 metres) to see the Skellig Rocks. (The larger one is Skellig Michael where there is an 8th Century monastery on the rock which rises about 250m straight out of the sea) You can get a boat to the Skelligs from Valencia Harbour. Its quite an adventure as the sea is mostly always a little rough and you have to jump from the boat onto a small quay on the Skelligs. There is a youth hostel at Ballinskelligs and another at Valencia Harbour. My wife and I went to Valencia in 1994 when our eldest daughter was just 2 years old and got a man to row us out to where a friend of ours was excavating an ancient pre-christian graveyard on Church Island. Valentia island is where the then largest ship in the world, The Great Eastern, set out to lay the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable to connect the UK to America (Ireland was part of the UK from 1171 till 1922) Take N70 from Valencia to Killorglin, scene of an annual fair called “Puck Fair” A white billy goat is crowned “King” and put on a high platform every day for a week where all the gypsies in the country traditionally meet and trade horses and ponies , and you can get your fortune told and I’m told that a traditional matchmaker will even find you a husband/wife etc if so desired! From Killorglin by N70 to Castlemaine take R561 to Dingle. The Dingle Peninsula was the cradle of the Celtic revival in the end of the 19th Century scholars from Ireland and the UK came there to collect stories and folk tales and songs and some famous books in Gaelic Language were written by Peig Sayers and Muiris 0’ Sullivan (“Twenty years a growing”) and Thomas O’Crohan (“The Islander”) and Sean Crohan (his son) of the Blasket Islands at the end of the peninsula. If you want to read some humorous irreverent books about Irish culture then Flan O’Brien’s “Third Policeman” could be the one. Heres a quick review lifted from the internet. The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien Posted by barry 'Within the boundaries of this novel the reader will find: a murder thriller; a comic satire about an archetypal village police force; a surrealistic vision of eternity; the story of a tender, brief unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle; and a chilling fable of unending guilt.' When I was in my mid-teens, I discovered a copy of The Third Policeman in my local library. Nothing was ever the same again. Written in 1939, but not published until after the author's death, it's a book that threatens to defy the dimensions of it's own pages. Sub plots and wild theories run through almost independent footnotes, introducing De Selby, the scientist who believed that night was but an accumulation of 'black sooty substances' in the atmosphere, and that travel was an illusion. In the main text, our De Selby-obsessed narrator is pulled backwards through an Irish rural version of Dante's inferno - a place where policemen steal bicycles to combat the effects of atomic theory, yet a man is accused of acting suspiciously for merely not having a bicycle. One friend of mine couldn't look at a bicycle the same way for months after reading this book. The Third Policeman is a frightening, hilarious book that will survive many readings - it may be a slim volume, but it has hidden depths. Ireland has 2 Official Languages – English and Gaelic, with English being the more widely spoken. Gaelic is also spoken in the remote islands of the North of Scotland and on the western coastal areas. Gaelic is the older of the 2 languages and was banned in the 1640’s by the English, who ruled Ireland for 800 years. They also banned it in Scotland after the 1745 rebellion by the Scots when the Scottish pretender Prince Charles Edward Stewart invaded England to claim the throne from George I of England. Miraculously, it survived in the west of Ireland and its use has been encouraged by every government since the founding of the Independent Irish State in 1922. Every child has to learn Gaelic at School till they finish secondary school so even the worst people at languages will be able to speak a little Gaelic. The Dingle peninsula is very beautiful and well worth a cycle round. Take R561 round to Slea Head and walk to Dunbeg promontory Fort 3000BC. See Blasket Island from there and see Riasc and Galarus Oratory (Small corbelled church buildings built wholly of dry stones, no mortar.take Minor Road north at Dingle for Knockmoylemore and join R560 for Tralee later R551 for Ballybronan, Ballyheigue, Ballyduff and Ballybunion (the reason so many town names begin with “Bally” in Ireland is that it means “town” in Gaelic and is a corruption of the Gaelic word “Baile”, pronounced “boll-ya”) Ballybunion is a holiday town that I went on holidays to with my parents in 1964 and went there every year till 1974 you might not like tourist places with beaches, rocks and high cliffs etc but it does have one curiousity Collins Seaweed Baths on Ladies Strand – it’s the funniest thing sitting in a bath and having somebody pile warm seaweed on top of you! Its apparently very good for your skin. The iodine from the seaweed dissolves in the warm seawater in your bath and has a delicious salty seaweedy smell! Heres a web connection for you to explore - http://www.discoverireland.com/gb/ireland-things-to-see-and-do/listings/product/?fid=FI_45253 From Ballybunion take the R551 to Tarbert where there is a ferry across the Shannon Estuary to County Clare. And then take a minor roads to Lehinch where you can go body surfing on the huge surfing-quality waves in the cold sea water (about 20-30 minutes is a good limit before your extremities start turning blue!) After Lehinch to the west are the 220m high cliffs of Moher where you can see the Aran Islands, which are Gaelic speaking. I went there by light aeroplane on my honeymoon after I got married and we had to have 2 tries at landing on Inismore, the largest island because a cow had strayed onto the runway and the pilot had to radio the farmer to chase it away! Landing was quite exciting because there was a cliff at the end of the runway and the plane had to stop very quickly. You can also get a boat there from Galway. You can play a 10 minute clip of the classic 1934 documentary Man of Aran by the American Director Robert Flaherty to get a feeling for what the life of these people was like at the time and why the people left the Blasket Islands. Its hard to imagine how the people could have survived on this island which has no soil of its own, the fields are tiny, surrounded by stone walls everywhere, they fertilised them by gathering seaweed and burning it and using the ashes as soil. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SB_5QS7QEg&feature=related Heres another documentary by an American filmmaker whose ancestors came from Aran, taken more recently in colour, which tells you a little about life on the island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-30JrFNN5N8&feature=related After the cliffs of Moher proceed to Lisdoonvarna and east to the Burren, a plateau of bare limestone pavement like the karst scenery of the Dalmation coast in Croatia. The Burren has many Megalithic tombs, iron age forts and extensive limestone cave systems and turloughs- disappearing lakes which suddenly appear when the groundwaters rise and disappear just a quickly when the water levels fall. To the Northwest of the Burren is Galway, where you can get a train back to Dublin I hope that that this gives you a flavour of Ireland and is of some assistance. You can google discover Ireland website or borrow a few travel books for more info. Have a nice Holiday. regards, John L
My Latest Route: Jan 2012 Giffnock Railway Station to Dunblane Railway Station

john.lumley

31 Dec 22:17

Joined: 25 Dec 2011

Posts: 7

Bike:

My Profile

Dear Catherine, here is an itinerary that I made up for a cyclist from Croatia, which follows an interesting route from Dublin to Galway. His route went around Ireland twice as he wanted to cycle 3000km and Ireland simply isnt that big! You can get a train back from Galway or cycle to Tralee or Killarney from Dingle and get a train , if you want to finish up there. I've also suggest a few things to do and the odd eccentric book (Flan O'Brien - "The third policeman") although if you you prefer Romantic Irish Fiction you could try Edna O'Briens "The County Girls" or "Dancing at Lughnasa" to get a literary flavour of Ireland before you come. You can purchase maps in advance by mail order from Stanfords of London or the Cycle Tourists Club (UK) www.ctc.org.uk OR Ordnance Survey Ireland www.osi.ie (v.detailed large scale maps and aerial photographs only) or Eason Online Bookshop http://www.easons.com/ (Ireland holiday map (East & South) 7.50 Euros each + p&p.) Easter is the best time of the year as the weather is quite unreliable generally especially in the west & North-west of Ireland even in July.

Ireland is shaped rather like an irregular saucer with the rugged high land around the coast, with especially rugged areas in the south west of County Cork, County Kerry, County Clare, County Galway, Mayo, Sligo and Donegal. In the West of Ireland you will find vast empty spaces of blanket bogs fed by over 250 days of rain every year punctuated by small villages and towns with brightly painted houses, but not quite as wild as the highlands of Scotland, as the fields are stony and the inhabitants had to build miles of stone walls plucked from the fields, which gives the landscape a special intimate character, a gleaming greenness regulated by grey limestone walls, hence its name “the emerald isle”. Ireland has a dense network of (mostly) metalled minor roads often surrounded by tall uncut hedges and full of mysterious ancient forts and castles and ruins and is still a very rural country, slightly chaotic place.
One can avoid main roads altogether these are without exception designated “N” or National Route only 2 routes are designated as European routes the Dublin to Cork and Dublin to Belfast which are the busiest and are now mostly motorway, so best avoided.

A word of caution about Irelands drinking culture, some people still drink and drive, so you are best off not cycling on rural roads after 11pm on any night as this can be a dangerous time, as this is when the pubs close, if people are even a little drunk and driving a car and over confident about their driving abilities/ speed/ reactions etc accidents are more likely.

All the signs in the country have recently been changed to Kilometres but when thinking about directions most(older) people still think in miles.
You said that you wanted to do a tour of 3000 kilometres, but as Ireland is only about 450 Km from North to South you might have to go around it several times to accomplish this distance.

The route that I describe is probably about 1500-2000 km (I’m guessing) as it goes right around the whole coastline and does a couple of loops across the north of the country and loops back into the midlands and the Slieve Bloom mountains to finish back in Dublin.

The most beautiful areas are unsurprisingly, the most popular with tourists, but you don’t have to stay there if you don’t want. The N70 is called “The Ring of Kerry” and can get as crowded as the Amalfi coast in Italy or the Dalmation Coast but I have steered a course away from it but still seeing all the mountains that people go to see in Kerry.

Fly into Dublin ask for Airport bus to Greystones to get you about 30 kms out of the city (about £5). Cycle into the hills to Glendalough, ancient monastic site with round tower and ancient but tiny church and scenic Valley then Laragh, Rathdrum,, Tinahealy, Bunclody, Kiltealy, Borris, Kilkenny (Castle, pubs, elegant architecture etc)
Ballinagarry,Killenade/ Cashel (Ancient Church site on dramatic Rock, site of infamous massacre by the English in 16th Century when they locked the people into the church and burnt it down , nice place to have a cup of tea at the cake shop in the town. Take N8 to Mitchellstown, N73 Mallow, N20 Blarney (famous castle, climb up to the top, lean over backwards, holding a rail on the outside of the top of the tower and kiss the Blarney Stone – supposed to give you “the gift of the gab” that is non stop talking! , something most Irish people have already. Cork is a marvellous place, but if you want to give cities a miss you can head to Kinsale on the coast instead on N71 and R605 Kinsale is very scenic and has a castle, the Spanish landed an army here in the 16th Century hoping to invade England from there, so its ancient fortifications weren’t for nothing. Take R600 to Timoleague, Clonakilty, Roscarberry, Skibbereen, Skull, Mizzen Head (most southerly point in Ireland) then take R591 to Bantry and the lovely Bantry Bay and Bantry House take N71 to Glengarriff take the R572 to Adrigole an turn right over the Tim Healy Pass (just for a bit of exercise and a nice view of the coast!) R574 and R571 to Kenmare then take N72 to Killarney over another pass (see Mucross House and the beautiful Loch Lene then go through Killarney and take the N72 (R562) for Killorglin and turn left at Beaufort (You can see the magnificent McGillacudddys Reeks, highest mountains in Ireland, and the tallest mountain is called Carrontouhill go past Kate Kearney Cottage, a tourist trap and head over the famous Gap of Dunloe, an un-surfaced road with grades of 25% used in most of the amateur and professional cycle tours of Ireland ) There is a youth hostel at the bottom of this road that you can recover at, though I suspect that you’re much fitter than I am and wont need to! Head south away from the “Reeks”, west on the R568 for 1 mile and right on a minor road towards Boheeshil, Bealalaw Bridge, Lisatinnig Bridge,Knockanaden Cross, Coonduff, left onto N70 to Derryeen, then Ballinskelligs and Climb Bolus Mountain (409 metres) to see the Skellig Rocks. (The larger one is Skellig Michael where there is an 8th Century monastery on the rock which rises about 250m straight out of the sea)
You can get a boat to the Skelligs from Valencia Harbour. Its quite an adventure as the sea is mostly always a little rough and you have to jump from the boat onto a small quay on the Skelligs. There is a youth hostel at Ballinskelligs and another at Valencia Harbour. My wife and I went to Valencia in 1994 when our eldest daughter was just 2 years old and got a man to row us out to where a friend of ours was excavating an ancient pre-christian graveyard on Church Island. Valentia island is where the then largest ship in the world, The Great Eastern, set out to lay the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable to connect the UK to America (Ireland was part of the UK from 1171 till 1922)
Take N70 from Valencia to Killorglin, scene of an annual fair called “Puck Fair” A white billy goat is crowned “King” and put on a high platform every day for a week where all the gypsies in the country traditionally meet and trade horses and ponies , and you can get your fortune told and I’m told that a traditional matchmaker will even find you a husband/wife etc if so desired!
From Killorglin by N70 to Castlemaine take R561 to Dingle.

The Dingle Peninsula was the cradle of the Celtic revival in the end of the 19th Century scholars from Ireland and the UK came there to collect stories and folk tales and songs and some famous books in Gaelic Language were written by Peig Sayers and Muiris 0’ Sullivan (“Twenty years a growing”) and Thomas O’Crohan (“The Islander”) and Sean Crohan (his son) of the Blasket Islands at the end of the peninsula.

If you want to read some humorous irreverent books about Irish culture then Flan O’Brien’s “Third Policeman” could be the one. Heres a quick review lifted from the internet.
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
Posted by barry

'Within the boundaries of this novel the reader will find: a murder thriller; a comic satire about an archetypal village police force; a surrealistic vision of eternity; the story of a tender, brief unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle; and a chilling fable of unending guilt.'
When I was in my mid-teens, I discovered a copy of *The Third Policeman* in my local library. Nothing was *ever* the same again. Written in 1939, but not published until after the author's death, it's a book that threatens to defy the dimensions of it's own pages. Sub plots and wild theories run through almost independent footnotes, introducing De Selby, the scientist who believed that night was but an accumulation of 'black sooty substances' in the atmosphere, and that travel was an illusion.
In the main text, our De Selby-obsessed narrator is pulled backwards through an Irish rural version of Dante's inferno - a place where policemen steal bicycles to combat the effects of atomic theory, yet a man is accused of acting suspiciously for merely not having a bicycle. One friend of mine couldn't look at a bicycle the same way for months after reading this book.
The Third Policeman is a frightening, hilarious book that will survive many readings - it may be a slim volume, but it has hidden depths.
Ireland has 2 Official Languages – English and Gaelic, with English being the more widely spoken. Gaelic is also spoken in the remote islands of the North of Scotland and on the western coastal areas. Gaelic is the older of the 2 languages and was banned in the 1640’s by the English, who ruled Ireland for 800 years. They also banned it in Scotland after the 1745 rebellion by the Scots when the Scottish pretender Prince Charles Edward Stewart invaded England to claim the throne from George I of England. Miraculously, it survived in the west of Ireland and its use has been encouraged by every government since the founding of the Independent Irish State in 1922. Every child has to learn Gaelic at School till they finish secondary school so even the worst people at languages will be able to speak a little Gaelic.

The Dingle peninsula is very beautiful and well worth a cycle round. Take R561 round to Slea Head and walk to Dunbeg promontory Fort 3000BC. See Blasket Island from there and see Riasc and Galarus Oratory (Small corbelled church buildings built wholly of dry stones, no mortar.take Minor Road north at Dingle for Knockmoylemore and join R560 for Tralee later R551 for Ballybronan, Ballyheigue, Ballyduff and Ballybunion (the reason so many town names begin with “Bally” in Ireland is that it means “town” in Gaelic and is a corruption of the Gaelic word “Baile”, pronounced “boll-ya”) Ballybunion is a holiday town that I went on holidays to with my parents in 1964 and went there every year till 1974 you might not like tourist places with beaches, rocks and high cliffs etc but it does have one curiousity Collins Seaweed Baths on Ladies Strand – it’s the funniest thing sitting in a bath and having somebody pile warm seaweed on top of you! Its apparently very good for your skin. The iodine from the seaweed dissolves in the warm seawater in your bath and has a delicious salty seaweedy smell! Heres a web connection for you to explore - http://www.discoverireland.com/gb/ireland-things-to-see-and-do/listings/product/?fid=FI_45253

From Ballybunion take the R551 to Tarbert where there is a ferry across the Shannon Estuary to County Clare. And then take a minor roads to Lehinch where you can go body surfing on the huge surfing-quality waves in the cold sea water (about 20-30 minutes is a good limit before your extremities start turning blue!) After Lehinch to the west are the 220m high cliffs of Moher where you can see the Aran Islands, which are Gaelic speaking. I went there by light aeroplane on my honeymoon after I got married and we had to have 2 tries at landing on Inismore, the largest island because a cow had strayed onto the runway and the pilot had to radio the farmer to chase it away! Landing was quite exciting because there was a cliff at the end of the runway and the plane had to stop very quickly. You can also get a boat there from Galway. You can play a 10 minute clip of the classic 1934 documentary Man of Aran by the American Director Robert Flaherty to get a feeling for what the life of these people was like at the time and why the people left the Blasket Islands. Its hard to imagine how the people could have survived on this island which has no soil of its own, the fields are tiny, surrounded by stone walls everywhere, they fertilised them by gathering seaweed and burning it and using the ashes as soil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SB_5QS7QEg&feature=related
Heres another documentary by an American filmmaker whose ancestors came from Aran, taken more recently in colour, which tells you a little about life on the island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-30JrFNN5N8&feature=related
After the cliffs of Moher proceed to Lisdoonvarna and east to the Burren, a plateau of bare limestone pavement like the karst scenery of the Dalmation coast in Croatia. The Burren has many Megalithic tombs, iron age forts and extensive limestone cave systems and turloughs- disappearing lakes which suddenly appear when the groundwaters rise and disappear just a quickly when the water levels fall. To the Northwest of the Burren is Galway, where you can get a train back to Dublin

I hope that that this gives you a flavour of Ireland and is of some assistance.
You can google discover Ireland website or borrow a few travel books for more info.
Have a nice Holiday.
regards, John L

My Latest Route: Jan 2012 Giffnock Railway Station to Dunblane Railway Station

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