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From Dublin: Connemara and Galway Full-Day Tour
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From €75 per person
This full-day tour from Dublin heads west through some of Ireland’s most dramatic scenery to reach Connemara and Galway. It’s a long day - around 12 hours - but the distance pays off.
The first real stop is Glengowla Farm, where you can walk through 19th-century silver mines that were worked commercially in the 1800s. There’s also a traditional sheepdog demonstration here, which gives a genuine sense of how hill farming operates in the west.
After Glengowla, the route goes deep into Connemara’s interior, through deserted valleys ringed by mountains and dotted with lakes. This is genuinely remote Ireland, and the views are worth the drive alone. The road eventually traces the coast before dropping you into Galway city, where you’ll have two hours to wander. An optional guided walking tour of the city is available if you’d like a bit more structure to your time there.
Round-trip transportation from Dublin is included throughout. Lunch and personal expenses are at your own cost.
Glengowla silver mines sit just east of Oughterard on the N59 - the village is the last proper fuel and coffee stop before the Connemara roads narrow. If you have a few minutes before boarding the coach at Glengowla, Buach Beag café in Oughterard is the only proper café in the village and does soup and sandwiches made that morning. Aughnanure Castle, a six-storey O’Flaherty tower house from around 1500, is three kilometres east on the lough shore if you want a fifteen-minute detour to something genuinely old.
Two hours in Galway moves fast. If you skip the guided walking tour and go on your own, the medieval core is compact: from the coach drop-off, Shop Street and Quay Street are within a few minutes’ walk and both streets narrow into laneways that reward wandering. The Claddagh neighbourhood - the old fishing village the city absorbed - is a ten-minute walk from the centre and fits neatly into a loop back along the Long Walk.
For a quick and genuinely good lunch, the Gourmet Tart Company does counter seating, hand pies, and coffee, and the queues move fast. Ard Bia at Nimmo is on the quayside and does a locally-led menu if you want something more substantial - but check the pace of the queue against your two hours.
The Connemara driving section is where you want to sit on the right side of the coach. The mountain lakes and bog come at you from that side on the westward run, and it’s worth claiming a window seat before the coach fills in Dublin.
Glengowla’s silver mines are a genuine working history attraction, not a reconstruction. The guided tour through the mine passages takes you past original tools and equipment - bring a light jacket, as it’s cool underground regardless of the weather outside.