Ten days in Ireland: the further west you drive, the better it gets

The white iron footbridge everybody photographs, opened in 1816 and named for the halfpenny it cost to cross. Two minutes from the middle of the city and the obvious place to start.

A street away from the water and well outside Temple Bar, which is four streets of stag parties paying over the odds. Dublin kitchens thin out after nine.

Twenty minutes west in Smithfield, and worth the walk: musicians sit in the front bar most nights and play to each other rather than to the room. No cover, no set list, and nobody talks over the slow tunes.

A Georgian campus founded in 1592, still a working university, and the home of the Book of Kells: a gospel manuscript written around the year 800, shown two pages at a time. Upstairs is the Long Room, a barrel-vaulted hall of two hundred thousand books.

Free, and the best thing in Dublin. Prehistoric gold collars, bog bodies preserved down to the fingernails, and a treasury of early medieval metalwork made while most of Europe had stopped bothering.

The streets between the museum and the castle feed office workers rather than visitors, which is exactly what you want in the middle of the day.

The seat of British rule in Ireland for seven centuries, handed over in 1922. Take the guided tour for the medieval undercroft and the Chapel Royal, or pay less and walk the State Apartments at your own speed.

A prison from 1796 to 1924 and the place the leaders of the 1916 Rising were shot. The Victorian wing is what people photograph; the yard at the end is where the room goes quiet.

A few cafes sit around the gaol and the old Royal Hospital beside it. Eat before you walk east, because there is nothing between here and the brewery gates.

The St James's Gate brewery still works, though this building is an exhibition rather than a production line. The ticket includes a pint upstairs in a glass drum of a bar with the widest view in Dublin.

A Victorian pub off Dame Street with no television and a marble bar, and the right place to end three days in the city. Order at the counter and stand.

About three hundred kilometres, and three hours thirty without stops, on the M7 and then the N21. There is a direct train too, if you would rather pick the car up in Killarney instead.

The park gate is a few hundred metres from the middle of town. Free, unfenced, open until six, and the path from the gate runs down through old oaks to the lake shore, with deer on the grass in the last hour of light.

A pub since 1891, wooden and dim, with a fire going most of the year and live music that might be traditional and might not. Small enough that you will end up in a conversation.

A Franciscan friary of 1448, sacked repeatedly and finished by Cromwell. A single enormous yew fills the whole cloister courtyard, and the graveyard around it is still in use.

Built in 1843 and rushed into shape for Queen Victoria's visit of 1861, which cost the family more than it was worth. The traditional farms behind it recreate Kerry smallholdings of the 1930s, with working animals and no glass between you and them.

There is a decent cafe here and nothing at all at the waterfall, so eat whether or not you feel like it yet.

Twenty metres of white water in a wooded gorge, five minutes uphill from the road. Carry on another twenty minutes up the steps behind it for the view back over the lakes, which most people never do.

Buses leave town around nine and every operator sells the same trip. Take the walking option rather than the trap if the morning is dry.

A road built for carts and still mostly used by them, between the Reeks on one side and Purple Mountain on the other. Rock walls, five lakes, a long descent into the valley on the far side, and no traffic worth the name.

A cafe at the bottom of the descent, and nothing before it. Carry something for the crossing itself.

Where the rivers from two of the lakes come together under an old stone bridge, and the boatman has to pole through the shallows. Old oak woodland comes down to the water on both banks.

A fifteenth century tower house on the shore where the boats land, held by the O'Donoghues and taken as a barracks after 1688, which is why it survived. Guided tour only, and the last one goes early.

Around two hours thirty north through Limerick. The alternative is the car ferry across the Shannon estuary, which is slower, costs more and is a far better morning.

Eight kilometres of sea cliff rising to a bit over two hundred metres, with a paved path along the top and a great deal of unpaved one beyond it. Puffins nest on the stacks from April to July. On a windy day, stay behind the wall and mean it.

Two stone arches on the riverbank in Galway, all that survives of a seventeenth century extension to the town wall. The grass in front is where the city sits out on any dry evening, and the Corrib runs past fast enough to hear.

The lanes running down to the water are full of small kitchens using what comes off the bay. Galway eats earlier than you would think and fills up from seven.

A small pub off the main street with traditional music almost every night and no stage to put it on. The kitchen shuts at five, so come after dinner rather than for it.

Founded in 1320 and enlarged twice, the largest medieval church in Ireland still in ordinary weekly use. Look for the Lynch tombs, and the window where a fifteenth century mayor is said to have hanged his own son.

Three floors on the city's archaeology, its Spanish trade and its fishing, next to the arch you walked past last night. Free, and about an hour if you read the labels.

Anywhere between the church and the water. This is a student town as well as a tourist one, so lunch is cheap if you walk one street back from the busy ones.

A chip shop and fish restaurant that has been frying since 1902. Take it away and eat by the water, or sit at the shared tables inside. No ceremony, and a queue by half six.

An hour and a half by the direct road, longer and better by the coast. There is a bus tour from Galway that does the same loop if you would rather not drive it.

A cod-Gothic castle built from 1867 with a Manchester textile fortune, bought in 1920 by Benedictine nuns who had been evacuated from Ypres. A few rooms are open, but the Victorian walled garden a shuttle ride away is the reason to come.

The abbey has a large cafe and the village three kilometres on has two smaller and better ones. Either way, eat before the walk rather than after it.

Two thousand hectares of mountain, heath and blanket bog, with a visitor centre at the gate and no charge to walk in. The bog here is so poor that several of the plants growing on it eat insects to get by.

The hill behind the visitor centre, and the walk worth doing: a marked loop of about three kilometres with a stiff climb in the middle and the whole coast laid out from the top. Boots, and two hours.

The seafront walk west out of Galway, two kilometres of it, ending at a diving tower that people jump off all year. Kick the wall at the end, which is what everyone here does before turning round.

Around a hundred and eighty minutes on the M6, most of it dull, which is the correct way to end a trip like this one. Fuel is cheaper off the motorway than on it.