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Private Day Tour Cliffs of Moher from Dublin
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From €1250 per person
Your driver-guide has been working in Ireland for 20 years and knows this route well. The day takes you from Dublin out to the Cliffs of Moher, where you’ll have two hours to take in the wild Atlantic coastline, then on to the colourful village of Doolin for lunch - think seafood chowder or fish and chips. From there you follow the Wild Atlantic Way along the coast before making your way back to Dublin.
It’s a long day, 10 to 12 hours on the road, but you travel in a private, air-conditioned vehicle with a guide who’s happy to answer questions and point out things you’d miss on your own.
You depart Dublin and head west, stopping en route at the monastery of Kilmacduagh. A scenic road then brings you to the Cliffs of Moher, where you’ll have two hours to explore. After that it’s on to Doolin for lunch, then a coastal drive through the Burren National Park with a stop at the Burren Chocolate Factory before the two-hour drive back to Dublin.
The coastal stretch along the Burren takes around 90 minutes and follows the Wild Atlantic Way.
The monastery stop at Kilmacduagh is worth taking slowly. The round tower stands 34 metres tall and has been leaning slightly eastward for nine centuries - the weight of the stone pressing into the bog on one side. It was built in the 10th century, three hundred years after St Colman mac Duach founded the monastery on what everyone else thought was worthless bogland. The site is free to walk, uncrowded, and the monastery circuit takes around 45 minutes. It’s the kind of place that resets you before the Cliffs arrive.
For your Doolin lunch, Doolin is three hamlets - Fisher Street, Roadford, and the Harbour. Gus O’Connor’s on Fisher Street has been pouring since 1832 and the chowder is genuinely the thing to order. McGann’s at the Roadford crossroads is the local alternative - same county, quieter room, turf fire most of the year. If you’re in Doolin on a Friday or Saturday, try to extend the stop a little: the trad sessions run in all four pubs and the village shows its best side after six.
Two hours at the Cliffs is the right amount. Walk the cliff path south from the visitor centre and the crowds thin quickly. The views over Galway Bay and the Aran Islands are best in the late morning before the afternoon haze builds. Bring a layer - the wind off the Atlantic at 700 feet is a different conversation to the car park.
The Burren stretch of the Wild Atlantic Way on the drive home is genuinely different to everywhere else you’ll see in Ireland - limestone pavement running down to the sea, rare wildflowers in the cracks, the kind of landscape that doesn’t look like it belongs here. If your guide offers to slow down on this section, take the offer.
That coastal drive takes you through Ballyvaughan - the small village at the bottom of the Burren where the limestone meets Galway Bay. The Corkscrew Hill road behind it was built as famine relief work in the 1840s. Monk’s Pub at the harbour pier does a seafood chowder that’s worth a stop, and if your guide has time, O’Loclainn’s Whiskey Bar - a back room with a stove and bottles from distilleries that closed in the 1970s - is one of those places you’d only find by being told.
If the Cliffs of Moher are the highlight of your day, Liscannor is worth knowing about. It’s a small fishing village eight kilometres south of the visitor centre, at the foot of the Hag’s Head walk - the quiet end of the cliff trail where the tour buses don’t go. The cliff walk from Liscannor to Hag’s Head and on toward the visitor centre is the best way to see the cliffs without a railing between you and the edge. Vaughan’s Anchor Inn in the village has been run by the same family since 1979 and the seafood kitchen is Michelin-recommended.
From the top of the cliffs on a clear day, the Aran Islands sit low in the water to the north-west. The largest of them, Inis Mór, is where Kilronan is - the main village on the island, home to Dún Aonghasa, a prehistoric stone fort on a cliff edge that makes the Moher viewing platform feel safe by comparison. The ferry from Doolin pier to Inis Oírr (the nearest island) takes twenty minutes; Inis Mór takes around an hour. It’s a full day extension rather than an afternoon add-on, but if you have a spare day in Clare it’s the obvious one.