6-Day Magical Southern Explorer Small Group Tour

The Slea Head Drive earns its reputation. The route around the tip of the Dingle Peninsula - past the ancient beehive huts called clochans, the Blasket Island viewpoints, and the Gallarus Oratory - is compact but extraordinary. The Dingle Distillery tour that follows is a good contrast: very much alive and contemporary, making gin and whiskey from local ingredients.

The Shannon Ferry crossing is a moment, not just a crossing. It cuts across the Shannon estuary between Killimer in Clare and Tarbert in Kerry and takes about 20 minutes. Dolphins show up in the estuary fairly regularly, and the views of the river mouth are worth being on deck for.

Muckross House is better than its reputation suggests. It's often treated as a standard country house visit, but the Victorian interiors are genuinely preserved rather than restored, and the grounds - leading to the shores of Muckross Lake inside Killarney National Park - are beautiful. Torc Waterfall is a short walk from the house and it's worth every step.

The Burren Farm experience is the kind of thing you remember. It's easy to see a landscape and move on. Spending time on a working farm inside the Burren - learning how farmers manage land in that environment and what the limestone terrain actually means for grazing and crops - gives you a completely different way of reading the place when you drive through it afterwards.