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From Dublin to Hill of Slane, Monasterboice, Pearse Lyons Disti
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From €601 per person
North of Dublin, within an hour or so of the city, there’s a cluster of sites that tell a long stretch of Irish history in a surprisingly compact area. This private day tour takes you to four of them, starting with the early Christian landscape around the Boyne Valley and finishing with a glass of whiskey in Dublin’s Liberties.
You’ll start at the Hill of Slane, where legend and early Christian history cross paths, then move on to Monasterboice - one of Ireland’s great early medieval monastic settlements - to see its high crosses and round tower. From there, the ruins of Mellifont Abbey, Ireland’s first Cistercian monastery, founded in 1142, with its remarkable two-storey octagonal lavabo still partly standing. The day wraps up at Pearse Lyons Distillery back in Dublin, a family-owned operation housed in a beautifully converted former church on St James’s Street, where you’ll get a tour and a tasting.
One thing to note: Pearse Lyons Distillery is closed on Tuesdays, so plan accordingly. The tour involves some walking throughout the day.
Monasterboice is the one to make time for. The high crosses at Monasterboice are genuinely exceptional - Muiredach’s Cross in particular, carved in the 10th century, is considered one of the finest examples of high cross carving in Ireland or anywhere else. It rewards a slow look rather than a quick walk-past. Your guide will walk you through the biblical scenes carved into each face.
The Hill of Slane is more atmospheric than it might look on a map. The ruins at the top are those of a Franciscan friary built in the 16th century, and the views across the Boyne Valley are wide and open in a way that gives you a real sense of how central this landscape was to early Irish history. On a clear day you can see for a long way.
Mellifont Abbey’s octagonal lavabo is unusual enough to be worth looking up before you go. It’s one of only a small number of such structures surviving in Ireland, and understanding what it was used for - communal hand-washing before meals in the Cistercian tradition - makes the visit more interesting. Your guide will explain the Conspiracy of Mellifont, a conflict between native Irish and Anglo-Norman Cistercian monks that’s a good story by any standards.
Pearse Lyons Distillery is a proper local story. Pearse Lyons was a County Meath man who built a global animal nutrition business, and he invested in Irish whiskey in the early 2010s when few were taking the emerging craft distillery scene seriously. The church setting on St James’s Street is striking, and the whiskeys being produced are worth trying on their own terms. It’s a good way to end the day.
The Liberties neighbourhood around the distillery is one of Dublin’s oldest areas and well worth a wander if you have time after the tasting. The Iveagh Markets, Thomas Street and the surrounding streets have a different character to the tourist-facing parts of the city.