← All Kerry tours via Viator · From €5496 · 168 hours 
Wild Atlantic Way 7 Day Private Tour Mayo Connemara Kerry Cork
Free cancellation Booked securely via Viator
Check availability & prices →
From €5496 per person
You’re picked up at a time and location that suits you, and for the next seven days you travel Ireland’s west coast in a luxury Mercedes with WiFi and bottled water on board. Your driver holds an official guiding accreditation - this isn’t just someone who knows the roads, it’s someone who can properly bring these places to life.
The route takes in four of the west’s most celebrated counties: Mayo, Connemara, Kerry, and Cork. These are the landscapes that draw people back to Ireland again and again - wide Atlantic coastlines, mountain passes, islands just offshore, and the kind of quiet that’s hard to find anywhere else. Along the way, your guide will flag local options that don’t show up in guidebooks: markets, farms, woolen mills, distilleries, craft centres - places where you get a real feel for how people live here, not just how things look from a viewpoint.
Accommodation is available as an add-on. The standard option is 6 nights in boutique and luxury 4-star hotels and cosy inns, with full breakfasts included. If you’d prefer castle hotels or 5-star options, those can be arranged on request.
Book accommodation well ahead: the boutique hotels and cosy inns along the Wild Atlantic Way in Kerry and Connemara fill up fast, particularly June through August. If you’re taking the accommodation option, confirm the itinerary details with the operator as early as possible - the best rooms at the smaller properties go first, and castle-hotel options require more notice. In Clifden, the third Thursday in August is Connemara Pony Show week - every bed in town goes three months out, so if your tour falls near that date, make sure the operator has accounted for it.
The value of a private guide on a route like this: seven days with an accredited guide means you can ask to stop where the coaches don’t go. Woolen mills, family-run farms, working harbours, local markets - the itinerary should be shaped by what you want from Ireland, and this format gives you the flexibility to do that. Make your interests known at the start of day one.
Coming through Connemara via Oughterard: this is the last proper fuel and coffee stop before the bog roads narrow heading west. Buach Beag café on the main street is the place to stop - it closes at four, so time it right. From here to Clifden is ninety minutes on the N59, with no petrol or hot food on the road between. The drive takes you past the entrance to Aughnanure Castle, an O’Flaherty tower house from around 1500 on the shore of Lough Corrib, if your guide wants to add it in.
Clifden is the Connemara hub on this route: it sits between the Twelve Bens and the Atlantic, and it’s the natural overnight base for exploring the region. If you have any say in the itinerary, ask for the Sky Road loop - a 16km circuit out past Clifden Castle and onto the headland with the Atlantic on one side and the mountains on the other. The Derrygimlagh bog to the south is where Marconi sent the first commercial transatlantic wireless signal in 1907, and where Alcock and Brown crash-landed after the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919 - your guide should know this stretch well. For dinner, Mitchell’s on Market Street is the kitchen most locals will send you to: Atlantic seafood, Connemara lamb, book ahead in summer.
On gratuities: gratuities are not included in the tour price. For a week-long private tour, a tip at the end of the journey is customary if the service has been good - your guide will know this region in detail and has structured the whole week around you.