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Clonmaconoise, Sean's Bar and Athlone Castle en route to Galway
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From €850 per person
If you’re heading from Dublin Airport or Dublin city to Galway, this tour turns the journey into something worth having. Rather than a straight transfer, you’ll stop at Athlone to visit Sean’s Bar - reputedly the oldest pub in the world - and the Clonmacnoise Monastery, one of Ireland’s most significant early Christian monastic sites.
DM Executive Line handles the transfer in a modern Mercedes-Benz vehicle, fully licensed and insured in accordance with the Irish Government Transport Authority. Your chauffeur provides a meet-and-greet service and the price is fixed with no hidden costs after booking.
This is a private tour, running to your own schedule over 5-6 hours. Infant seats are available, and infants and small children can travel in a pram or stroller. Service animals are welcome. Public transport connections are available nearby at your destination, and the tour is suitable for all fitness levels.
Athlone sits at the narrowest crossing point of the Shannon, which is the whole reason the town is there - every army that wanted Ireland came here first. Sean’s Bar is a hundred yards from the castle on the west bank. Guinness World Records gave it the title of oldest pub in Ireland in 2004, with a claimed founding around 900 AD. When the bar was rebuilt in 1970 the owner found wattle-and-wicker walls and coins that the National Museum took - the argument about the exact founding year is the most enjoyable thing the pub has going. Order a pint and let the historians fight it out.
Athlone Castle itself is squat and grey and obviously useful, the way Norman castles are. If you have time between the bar and the road west, the Shannon riverbank walk from the castle is a short flat loop - out along the west bank, back along the marina - that takes about an hour.
Clonmacnoise is 20 minutes south of Athlone on the River Shannon. It is an OPW site with admission and a car park, and your driver can drop you at the gate. The monastery grounds are a walking circuit of roughly 1.5 km - start at the cathedral, move to the Round Tower of the Scribes, stand at the Cross of the Scriptures and read the carved panels. There is a small café in the visitor centre. There is nothing else for 15 km in any direction, so make use of it before you continue west.
Worth knowing: Clonmacnoise was raided by Vikings at least six times and ransacked by an English garrison in 1552. What survived is the largest collection of early medieval grave slabs in Western Europe - over 200 of them - and it is the stones, not the visitor centre film, that justify the stop.
Once you reach Galway, the city’s medieval core is walkable. Shop Street leads to Quay Street leads to the Spanish Arch - turn left at random from any of them and you will find something worth pausing for.