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Dublin Mountain Pub Tour ( small group Pub Crawl max 15 people)
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From €69 per person
If you want to see what Irish pub culture actually looks like outside the city, this is the tour to do it on. Groups are capped at 15 people, so you’re not piling into a tourist bus - you’re heading into the Dublin Mountains with a small crowd, stopping at three genuinely local pubs along the way.
Over five hours, you’ll travel through beautiful Irish countryside between pubs, enjoy craft beer and whiskey at each stop, and finish the night with traditional live music at the last pub. It’s a relaxed, sociable evening and a good way to make new friends while you’re at it.
Eat before you go - not all the pubs serve food.
Meeting point: By the City Hall Building at the bottom of Castle Street, just off Lord Edward Street. Have food before you go - not all the pubs serve it.
Eat a proper meal before you meet at City Hall. The meeting point is in the heart of Dublin 2, so you’ve got good options nearby - Dame Street, Werburgh Street, and the streets around George’s Street have plenty of places that’ll have you sorted well before the 5 PM window. The pubs in the mountains are not all guaranteed to serve food, and five hours of craft beer and whiskey on an empty stomach is nobody’s idea of a good evening.
The Merry Ploughboy at the foothills is a well-known venue, but the tour visits the main bar rather than the Irish Nights dinner show, so the atmosphere is more like a proper local pub than a staged performance. That’s actually a good thing - you get to experience the place the way locals do.
The drive up into the Dublin Mountains is part of the experience. The road climbs quickly out of the city and the views back over Dublin Bay open up on clear evenings. Have your phone ready because the light can be spectacular, particularly in summer when the evenings stretch on.
The traditional music session at the final pub tends to be the highlight people talk about afterwards. A real trad session - fiddles, flutes, bodhrans and occasional singing, all played in the same room - sounds very different from recorded music or a stage performance. Sit close to the musicians if you can and let it wash over you.
The group cap of 15 people matters more than it sounds. Pub crawls with 40 or 50 people descending on a small mountain pub change the atmosphere of those places. With 15, you’re a group of visitors that a local pub can actually absorb - you chat to the people at the bar, the barman has time to talk, and the whole thing feels like a genuine evening out rather than a organised event.