From enrolling in a Wicklow workshop to taking the plunge on the Viking Splash in Dublin, SANDRA O'CONNELLrounds up a few options that will keep your guests entertained – and give you a break
THE BEST THING you can do for house guests (and their hosts) is get them out of the house. If they’ve been in Ireland before, however, the problem is where to send them. Chances are they’ve already nosed around Newgrange, guzzled Guinness at the Storehouse and pottered around Powerscourt. Here are a few options that should give them enjoyment – and you a break.
Get crafty
They’ll already have their Aran sweaters and shillelaghs from previous visits, so how about getting them acquainted with real Irish design? This year has been denoted Year of Craft by the Craft Council, which has put together a number of events covering everything from woodturning to jewellery, and should be worth checking out.
You can put together an around-the-country craft trail for them, taking in the National Museum of Decorative Arts and History in Dublin, the National Craft Gallery in Kilkenny and Leitrim Design House in Carrick-on-Shannon.
Or let them concentrate on one of the ready-made craft trails promoted in parts of the country where the tradition is particularly strong. These include Made in Kilkenny, the West Cork Craft Design Guild and the South Wexford Craft Network.
If it’s pottery they’re after, it’s easy to while away a few hours at studios such as Nicholas Mosse’s in Bennetsbridge, Co Kilkenny, and Louis Mulcahy’s on Dingle peninsula, because both have great coffee shops, and at the latter they’ll even let your guests throw a few pots – on the wheel, that is.
If you send them off to Dingle they’re going to have to stay over, maybe even two nights. Just so happens the Dingle Skellig Hotel is offering two-night dinner, BB packages from €159 per person sharing.
craftinireland.com
Workshops in Wicklow
For an even more hands-on craft experience, plus a chance to go home with a brand new hobby, pack them off to Greenan Farm Museums and Maze in Rathdrum, where owners Will and Anita Wheeler have a series of workshops taking place over the coming months.
These cover a range of craft-based topics including outdoor painting with Rod Coyne of Avoca Painting School, soap making using all natural ingredients and a willow session teaching participants how to make everything from domes and tunnels to arbours and garden climbers – beautiful, living structures for their gardens – from willow.
There’s even a chance to do a course in keeping hens in urban environments, though hopefully they’ll return home before putting that one into practice.
Workshops run already this year include basket-making, wild foods and herbal remedies, so keep an eye on the website for word of their return.
All sessions cost €50 a day and run from 10am to 4pm. All you have to do is to put together a packed lunch for your guests, but tea, coffee and snacks are provided.
To save them the drive back to yours, book them into the nearby Brooklodge Hotel – of the organic Strawberry Tree restaurant – currently offering a summer special BB rate starting at €60 a night per person sharing.
greenanemaze.com
brooklodge.com
On the buses
Sure, you can hire them a car and send them off exploring, but for guaranteed fun, without the worry of them heading cheerily off on the wrong side of the road, book them on a bus tour.
These are cheap, they cover all the highlights, and, with the right provider, are great fun.
For Dublin-based guests looking for a day out, check out Wild Wicklow Tours, whose minibuses would seem, if you’re ever stuck behind one over the Sally Gap, to be fuelled by gales of laughter. A full-day tour costs €28.
For trips further afield, one of the best-known providers is Paddywagon Tours, aimed at not just the young but the young at heart. Thanks to a recession, and a return to greater sanity when it comes to seeking out value for money, passengers these days cross the age span.
As a result its overnight trips no longer confine you to youth hostel-style dorms. You can opt for its “de luxe” BB accommodation instead.
If they don’t want to stay overnight, there are plenty of one-day options as well, including ones from Cork city to Kinsale, Cobh and Blarney for €29, or a Ring of Kerry Tour from Cork for €39.
For €69 you can get them from Dublin to either the Ring of Kerry or the Blarney Stone in Cork and back, while a whole day tour from Dublin to the Aran Islands and back costs €89, including ferry. A four-day tour of the southwest, from Dublin, costs €215.
wildwicklow.ie
paddy wagon tours.com
Waterbuses
For a bus tour with a difference, and loads of laughs to boot, make sure they have a go on Dublin’s Viking Splash Tours.
These amphibious vehicles depart almost every half hour from St Stephen’s Green north, and the tour takes about an hour and 15 minutes – plenty of time for a potted history of Viking and medieval Dublin, Trinity College, Christ Church Cathedral and Georgian Dublin.
The main attraction is billed as the 15-20 minutes spent floating around Grand Canal Basin, and indeed that is the main novelty aspect, but the real fun comes from flying around the capital in a horned helmet, trying to scare the bejaysus out of unsuspecting pedestrians with your roars.
The bus/boats are genuine second World War vehicles, most of which saw action and some of which came from war museums in France.
Tickets cost €20 for adults and €10 for kids under 12. If your group is all over 18, you can send them off for a package that includes the Viking Splash, followed by a bus trip with Rural Pub Tours that will take them up the Dublin mountains for an organised pub crawl. In all, they’ll be off your hands for seven hours – at a cost of €42.
Alternatively, they can do the Viking Splash Tour and follow it up with a three-course dinner, music and dancing at the Arlington Hotel (in Temple Bar or Bachelors Walk) for a combined price of €43.
vikingsplash.ie
Battle of the Boyne
Presuming they’ve done Newgrange, the next step in that neck of the woods is to send them off to Oldbridge House near Drogheda, site of the Battle of the Boyne between King William III and his father-in-law – can you imagine the rows in that family – King James II in 1690.
A whopping great shebang, not just in scale (36,000 on the Williamite side, 25,000 on the Jacobite, the largest number of troops ever deployed on an Irish battlefield) but in import – at stake were the British throne, French dominance in Europe and religious power in Ireland.
It’s a far more gentle affair these days. The visitor centre is located in the recently restored 18th-century Oldbridge House, built on the battle site, which includes access to its formal gardens.
There is a 15-minute video presentation in the visitor centre, a display of original and replica 17th-century weapons, and a laser battlefield model.
From there you can take a self-guided walk on the battle site and Boyne riverside walkway, followed by an amble through the menu at the Tearoom Pavilion, overlooking the garden.
Check in advance to see if there’s a living-history demo due the day you visit – a 15-minute demonstration with cavalry manoeuvres and musket firing. Entry for adults costs €4, children €2 and family tickets are €10.
battleoftheboyne.ie
On their bikes
If your guests are of the more active variety, get them out on two wheels on one of the growing number of Coillte- managed off-road mountain-bike trails.
Well maintained tracks are now open in forests in Ticknock in Dublin, Ballinastoe in Wicklow, Derroura and Portumna in Co Galway and Ballyhoura in Limerick. For the last, Ballyhoura Bike Hire in Kilmallock can get them mounted for €30 a day.
For an easier cycle pace – or indeed a walk – they can’t but love the award-winning Newport Mulranny Greenway, 18km of traffic-free cycle trail following the course of a long-closed railway line.
With gentle gradients and some of the most beautiful scenery in the west of Ireland, it is the longest off-road cycle trail in the country, and should take them about 2½ hours to complete. (Send them off on foot and they’ll be busy all day).
Make a trip of it by booking them into Mulranny Park Hotel, which can provide them with bikes. A two-night package including BB plus one dinner and one day’s bike hire starts at €189 per person sharing.
mulrannyparkhotel.ie
Gorge on Glendalough
Any visitor worth their salt will have Glendalough in their sights. To really give yourself a break, however, the trick is not to have them gallop around the boardwalk or they’ll be back to you before you know it.
Instead, get them to go up and over the Spink. It is truly spectacular, so they’ll thank you – in the end – and it will keep them occupied for three to four hours. Once they’ve navigated the hellish steps at the beginning, it’s flat, waymarked and well maintained all the way around. There’s even a boardwalk up there, so it’s not exactly Chris Bonington territory.
If the weather’s up to it, put a picnic in their backpack and let them make a day of it.
Walks begin and end at the visitor centre, which, happily, is right beside the Glendalough Hotel, currently offering BB plus dinner from €75 per person sharing. That’s another night taken care of.
glendalough.ie
glendaloughhotel.com
Horsing about
Horse and agricultural shows make for a great day out for overseas visitors, and the animals are the least of it.
Even if you don’t know your fetlocks from your forelocks, you can’t fail to get caught up in the human drama, from plaits and ponytails flying over fences to pushy pony mums hectoring from the sidelines.
The daddy of them all is the RDS Horse Show in Dublin, and if you are lucky enough to have guests staying in the first week of August, you’re sorted.
Along with the international jumping competitions, the big event this year is the arrival of the Ukrainian Cossacks, whose daring equine acrobatics will be on display daily in the main arena.
Best of all, however, is sitting and watching the young horses being led around the show rings, or rather, watching those who lead them try to retain their composure as their charges come to terms with cheering crowds and wind-blown programmes. General entrance tickets cost €21 for adults, €15 for under-16s and €54 for a family.
If the timing of that doesn’t suit you, or it’s the wrong side of the country, check out the Connemara Pony Festival in Clifden, Galway, instead.
It runs from August 14th to 21st, but centres on the Connemara Pony Show on the 18th and 19th. This year it has added extras such as a historic bus tour and a best-dressed lady competition. Plus it’s in Connemara, which is reason enough to visit.
Understandably, beds are like hen’s teeth at that time of year. At the time of writing, the Station House Hotel in Clifden has doubles from €170 a night on the 19th, but they’ve got to stay a minimum of two nights.
dublinhorseshow.com
cpbs.ie
clifdenstationhouse.ie
Festival fever
Another great way to keep visitors occupied is to follow the festival circuit. Discover Ireland has web pages devoted to festivals, arranged chronologically, so you can surely find one to suit.
From August 5th to 14th, for example, it’s the turn of the Kilkenny Arts Festival, which includes everything from classical music, theatre and dance to children’s shows and street events.
Or, on the same dates, send them off to the Rosscarbery Family Festival in west Cork for a week of mouse, dog and pig racing. There are also sandcastle and sand sculpture competitions, a vintage car rally and a parade.
For trad lovers, the Kilrush Traditional Music and Set Dancing Festival is the place to be from August 10th to 14th, while seafoodies can check out the Carlingford Oyster Festival on August 13th and 14th, and then work off the calories at the Enniscorthy Street Rhythms Dance Fest from August 19th to 21st.
Best-known of all is the Rose of Tralee Festival. If the Lovely Girls bit is too Father Ted for your visitors, they can still enjoy the Back to Basics Street Festival, which runs at the same time – August 19th to 23rd.
By which point Labour Day will surely be beckoning and you’ll have your house back to yourself. With any luck, next year it will be their turn to figure out what to do with you.
discoverireland.ie