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BEST Wild Atlantic Way 3 Day Private Tour Connemara Cliffs Galway
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From €1746 per person
Three days is a genuinely good amount of time to experience the Wild Atlantic Way at its best - Connemara, the Cliffs of Moher, Galway city - without feeling like you’re ticking boxes. You’re picked up from the airport at a time that suits you and from there you travel in a luxury Mercedes vehicle, WiFi on board and bottled water included, with an expert guide who holds official guiding accreditation.
The tour is designed around local connection as much as sightseeing. Your guide will point you towards bustling local markets, working farms, woolen mills and distilleries, craft centres and the kind of conversations with people who live here that you simply can’t plan. You’re not just passing through - you’re meeting the place. And food is taken seriously: your guide knows where the good spots are.
If you want to add accommodation, 2 nights in boutique and luxury-style hotels with full breakfasts can be included in your booking. 5-star and castle hotels are available on request. Additional tailored sites and activities can also be arranged.
Note: admission tickets to attractions are not included in the tour price.
Base yourself in Galway’s medieval quarter and walk everywhere in the evenings. Galway is a grid of laneways narrower than the streets that lead to them, with pubs doing trad sessions most nights of the week. Tigh Coili on Mainguard Street has a serious trad session nightly - high-standard stuff, not a tourist performance. Tig Mongáin is smaller and more intense. The sessions start around nine and go when the tunes decide they’re done.
Eat at Ard Bia at Nimmo on Quay Street. It’s a locally-led menu that changes with what’s come in from local producers. The dining room upstairs is where you want to be - it’s the kind of place that makes people think about what they ate long after they’ve left Galway. Book ahead if you can.
Oughterard is 27km west of Galway on the N59 - the last proper stop before Connemara opens up. Aughnanure Castle, an O’Flaherty tower house built around 1500, sits three kilometres east of the village on a rocky outcrop over Lough Corrib. Conn’s pub on Main Street is the angling crowd’s local and the staff can tell you which bank of the Owenriff River is fishing that week. It’s worth a coffee stop even if you’re heading straight on to Clifden.
Clifden is the capital of Connemara and the town John D’Arcy drew on bog in 1812. The Sky Road loops 16km out past the ruins of Clifden Castle and back along the headland with the Twelve Bens behind you and the Atlantic in front. Lowry’s on Market Street has won Ireland’s Best Traditional Bar three times and runs sessions most nights in season. Derrygimlagh bog, four kilometres south of town, is where both the first transatlantic wireless signal (Marconi, 1907) and the first transatlantic flight (Alcock and Brown, 1919) landed - the discovery loop is a 5km flat walk through it.
The Connemara Circle is worth planning a half-day around. West from Galway through Salthill to Connemara, up through Letterfrack and Leenaun, then back through the mountains. Your guide will know exactly where to slow down - the landscape changes fast and the light on the bog can stop you in your tracks. Don’t lock in a fixed itinerary for this stretch; the best stops on Connemara are the ones you make on impulse.
Liscannor is the back-door village for the Cliffs of Moher. A working pier, a single street and three pubs - Vaughan’s Anchor Inn has been a Michelin-recommended seafood kitchen since 1979. The clifftop trail from Liscannor runs north to Hag’s Head and on to the visitor centre, but the southern approach is quieter and free. John Philip Holland, who designed the first submarine the US Navy accepted into service (USS Holland, 1900), was born in a coastguard cottage here. The plaque in the village is small; the man’s achievement wasn’t.
Doolin is fifteen minutes north of Liscannor on the R478 and the trad music capital of west Clare. Gus O’Connor’s on Fisher Street has been running sessions since 1832, six generations of the same family. McGann’s and McDermott’s pick up the nights between them. The walk south from Doolin harbour to Hag’s Head follows the actual cliff edge - no turnstile, no car park fee, just open headland. Arrive at Gus O’Connor’s before nine for a seat near the players.
Arrive in Galway before July if you can. July is festival month - the Arts Festival, the Film Fleadh, and the Races in late July and early August fill every room in the city. The city is magnificent in July if you love a festival. Autumn is the locals’ season, when the sessions get serious again and a seat in a pub becomes possible before ten.