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Cliffs of Moher Full-Day Tour from Dublin
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From €75 per person
The Cliffs of Moher are Ireland’s most visited natural attraction, and this full-day tour gets you there and back from Dublin without the stress of driving yourself. The journey west is half the experience - you cross the Irish midlands, make a stop in a picture-perfect fishing village, and drive through the otherworldly Burren before arriving at 214 metres of sheer Atlantic cliff face.
You get a full two hours at the Cliffs, which is plenty of time to walk the cliff-top paths, take in the views of the Aran Islands and Galway Bay, and visit the Atlantic Edge Exhibition in the eco-friendly visitor centre built into the hillside. On clear days the views stretch all the way to the mountains of Connemara. If conditions allow, there’s also an optional boat cruise beneath the cliffs (seasonal, extra cost) that gives you a completely different perspective on the scale of the rock face from below.
The route takes in the Burren as well - one of Europe’s most unusual landscapes, a vast expanse of cracked limestone pavement where rare wildflowers push through ancient rock. Your guide will point out the 28 species of orchid that grow here in season, alongside the prehistoric dolmens and ring forts scattered across the terrain. A lunch stop at a local west coast village rounds out a day that covers the best of Ireland’s wild Atlantic coastline.
Kinvara is a genuine working harbour village. The photo stop at Kinvara is short, but it’s worth stepping off the coach for. Dunguaire Castle - a 16th-century tower house in red stone built around 1520 - sits right on a rocky promontory over the bay, and at the right time of day the light on it is the kind of thing cameras were invented for. The village has four pubs and a tradition of building and racing the traditional black-sailed Galway hooker boats. If you’re ever in Kinvara in August, the Cruinniú na mBád festival brings the hookers home for racing and sessions.
The Burren orchids are there if you know where to look. The guide will mention the 28 species of orchid that grow in the Burren, and it’s not an exaggeration. The limestone grikes - the cracks in the pavement - hold soil and plants that survived here since the last Ice Age. In April and May the flowers are most visible. Even in summer, if you step out onto the pavement for five minutes, the combination of bare stone and sudden wildflowers looks like nothing else in Ireland.
The lunch stop may be near Doolin or Liscannor. The west coast lunch stop varies by day, but you’re in the territory of Doolin - three hamlets with four serious trad music pubs, including Gus O’Connor’s which has been running sessions since 1832 - or Liscannor, the pier village south of the Cliffs where Vaughan’s Anchor Inn does Michelin-noted seafood and the Hag’s Head cliff walk starts above the harbour. Both are the kind of places that reward an hour of wandering after lunch.
The Burren village of Ballyvaughan is on the N67 route. Ballyvaughan sits where the limestone plateau meets Galway Bay - a harbour village with Monk’s Pub at the pier doing seafood chowder that justifies the drive from Galway. Corkscrew Hill climbs south behind the village in a sequence of tight hairpins built as famine relief work in the 1840s. If the coach slows here, look south - the Burren proper is the grey mass of rock rising from the water.
Walk away from the main viewpoint at the Cliffs. Two hours at the Cliffs is enough to walk a good stretch of the path. The cliff face is 8 kilometres long and the best photography and the most impressive drop-offs are not at the main entrance area. Walk north toward O’Brien’s Tower or south toward Hag’s Head and the crowds thin out quickly. The optional boat cruise (extra cost, seasonal) shows you the scale from below - if it’s running and the sea allows it, it’s worth considering.
The return along Galway Bay is the scenic half of the drive home. Sit on the right side of the coach for the return journey - the Galway Bay coastline drive runs close to the water, with the Burren limestone visible across the bay and the Aran Islands offshore in the distance. It’s a good way to close out the day.