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Rail Tour: The Cliffs of Moher & Bunratty Castle Tour
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From €149 per person
This is a long day, and it’s worth every early alarm. You check in at Dublin Heuston Station at 6:40am and take the InterCity train down to Limerick, where you swap to a coach for a short tour of the city - Limerick is the setting for Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, and there’s more to it than its reputation suggests.
From there, the route heads north to Bunratty Castle and Folk Village, with admission included. It’s one of the best-preserved tower houses in Ireland and the attached folk village gives a real sense of rural Irish life from past centuries. After a lunch stop at a Doolin pub, you continue on to the Cliffs of Moher - one of Ireland’s most famous stretches of coastline, rising sheer from the Atlantic on the Wild Atlantic Way.
The afternoon takes you through the Burren, a landscape that looks like it belongs on another planet, all limestone pavement and wildflowers. You round Black Head and follow the shores of Galway Bay into Galway city, where there’s time to take in the streets before boarding the Dublin-bound train. You’ll be back at Heuston Station at 9:00pm.
At Bunratty: The castle and Folk Park are included, and the Folk Park repays more time than most people give it. It’s a thirty-acre site with genuine relocated cottages, a working forge, a 19th-century street, and animals - people budget an hour and come out in three. The tour’s early arrival here is an advantage: the big coach groups tend to arrive later in the morning, so you’ll have the best of it. Durty Nelly’s pub, right at the foot of the castle, claims a licence going back to 1620 and makes for a good five-minute stop before you leave - but it fills fast at lunchtime.
Lunch in Doolin: Your lunch stop is in Doolin, and the pub stop is a good one. Doolin is one of Ireland’s trad music heartlands - the Russell brothers kept the local style alive through the quiet decades and the village has been a pilgrimage site for musicians ever since. Gus O’Connor’s has been on Fisher Street since 1832 and the chowder is exactly what you want after a morning in the wind. The sessions start at nine in the evening, well after this tour is back on the road, but the village itself is worth the few minutes you have there.
At the Cliffs of Moher: The visitor centre gives you the view you’ve seen in photos. The less-visited stretch starts a short walk south along the coastal path toward Hag’s Head, where the crowds thin quickly. If the weather is clear, the view north from O’Brien’s Tower toward Doolin Pier is the one that makes the day.
The Burren: The limestone pavement looks barren from a moving vehicle and reveals itself on foot. If the tour stops for photos, look in the cracks between the limestone slabs - they shelter orchids, gentians, and mountain avens that grow nowhere else in Ireland. The light across the Burren in the afternoon is particularly good.
Practical note: This is a long day on your feet. Comfortable walking shoes matter - the cliffs are exposed, the Folk Park is gravel underfoot, and Galway at the end is cobblestones. Bring a waterproof layer regardless of the forecast; the west Clare coast makes its own weather.
The south end of the cliffs starts at Liscannor. Liscannor is the village eight kilometres south of the Cliffs visitor centre where the coastal walk comes down to earth at Hag’s Head. The route between Doolin and Liscannor covers the full length of the accessible cliff edge. Vaughan’s Anchor Inn - three generations of the Vaughan family, Michelin-recommended, seafood off the local boats - is the right stop if you have time on either end of the cliffs. Liscannor is also the birthplace of John Philip Holland, who designed the first submarine the US Navy accepted into service.
The Burren section of the route comes through Ballyvaughan country. When this tour rounds Black Head and follows the shores of Galway Bay toward Galway city, you’re passing the limestone edge where Ballyvaughan sits. The village is where the Burren meets the bay - a pier built in 1829, the Burren Way starting at the edge of the village, and Monk’s Pub on the harbourfront with chowder heavy with mussels and salmon. If you’re extending this into a multi-day trip, Ballyvaughan is the base for walking the limestone pavement that the tour shows you through a coach window.