2024 Tours Portfolio
We are delighted to be offering an eclectic range of tours that sets us apart in Ireland. Tours that shine a light on the topics that have made this island famous – literature, folklore, mythology, scenery and rebellion. We strive to go off the grid and to really get in to what the landscape reveals – if you know where to look. We’ve done the homework, allowing you to enjoy the touring.
We take no more than six people in a limousine on our tours. With smaller numbers so we can give you a ‘hands-on’ experience. Good luck to those folk on a 52 seater zombus! Let’s get a plan underway via a consultation and help to make that long postponed trip to Ireland a little bit more special with one of our tours which are subject to our Terms and Conditions. To whet your appetite, some of the bespoke tours we are currently finalising include: –
Bespoke Tours
Got places of your own that you’d like us to go on around the island of Ireland? We will certainly try and accommodate, but should say upfront we are keen to offer something beyond the usual tourism drill of Ireland’s ‘greatest hits’. Yes, we will do the Cliffs of Moher – but only if say you are a big fan of Dusty Springfield and wish to salute where half of her ashes were scattered.
We’re not totally precious, honest! We just want to take you to places that the masses aren’t aware of. Places where our old friends the 52 seater ‘zombuses’ cannot go. Our priority is to provide a once-in-a-lifetime tour that you’ll remember fondly for years. Get in touch soon to secure a place!
Tours currently scheduled for 2024
Scheduled 2024 Tours
Guinness Deluxe Pilgrimage – 3/7 day Nationwide
Our flagship tour taking you around the country over either 3 or 7 days for a deep dive into the history and wonder of both the famous brew and the family behind it. This unique tour takes you from a tour of the brewery (not just the storehouse) to where it all began with a host of tales in between.
Along the way, highlights include finding out exactly where the name originates (both the ‘Arthur’ and the ‘Guinness’) where the Guinnesses lived and where they now rest, where the brew was discovered quite by chance and where the source of the brew’s water comes from. Over several days, staying in Ireland’s best accommodations, we will bring you to the sacred places that form part of the Guinness story. Limited season and numbers – early booking advised.
Donegal’s Hallowed Sites – 6 Day North West Tour
Enjoy 25 places in the most beautiful county in Ireland that are justifiably saluted by locals. Have a look at the link and allow yourself a week to properly savour each of these places. The last remnant from my defunct Donegal App, updated as a 2021 pandemic project, this is a labour of love of places in my home county that stand out for all the right reasons.
We welcome you to enjoy a deep-dive insight into these places in advance by listening to our playlist which features many of the actual people associated with the place. Best enjoyed on Spotify, complete with music, once done we’d be delighted to bring these places to life over the course of a week. With enough notice, we may be able to have some of those recorded involved.
Wild Atlantic Wonders – 5 day North & West Coast
The big ticket item for Ireland over the last few years has been the linear Wild Atlantic Way tour running some 2600 kms from Donegal to Cork. It’s a punishing route for the uninitiated, so let us do the hard work and take you to the best parts of counties Donegal, Sligo, Mayo right down to Galway.
Our tour starts in Donegal and goes as far as the Aran Islands. To us, a more scenic, less crowded part than the southern end. We will go out of its way to show you places that are off piste and away from the hordes along the famous route that hugs the west coast of Ireland. If you want the Cliffs of Moher and Blarney Castle, this is is not for you as we know of higher cliffs and better castles in the northern part of the route!
Tours available upon request
Birth of a Nation Tour – 2 hours Central Dublin
Celtic Calendar Tour – ad hoc Nationwide
Our ancestors here in Ireland certainly paid great attention to the passing of the seasons and were alert to the need to act accordingly, be in planting or harvesting. A whole host of events and superstitions also developed around the four key days of each of the seasons being the cross-quarter days of Imbolc for Spring, Bealtaine for Summer, Lughnasa for Autumn and Samhain for Winter.
Over the course of the year, let us guide you to the key locations and festivals now in place for each of the cross-quarter days. Samhain is no longer the big noise festival as Imbolc now merits its own public holiday with a full-on festival in Dublin. And yes, both Bealtaine and Lughnasa are well celebrated.
Heroes and Villains Tour – 4 day Nationwide
A follow-on from my highly-acclaimed 2023 tour theme (see the reviews at the page end). With nonchalant passivity, history lobs its protagonists into one of two camps as either hero or villain. Occasionally, some end up as both! I seek to tell you about a range of colourful characters from Irish history, some well-known, others forgotten that deserve to be told.
I literally know where all the bodies are buried – and I know their tales. Ireland is home to some unlikely heroes like St. Valentine and St. Nicholas no less, as well as villains like Lord Haw-Haw or Strongbow. Everyone from Charlie Haughey to Herman Gōrtz, Michael Collins to De Valera, Oliver Reed to Queen Medh, Typhoid Mary to Paddy Mayne are covered – if you so wish.
Irish Writers Tour – 4 day Nationwide
I was going to call this the ‘Dead Poets Society tour’, but this tour will be dealing with more than just poets and will take into account songwriters, novelists and playwrights. If you have your own favourite Irish writer, we’ll endeavour to include them on the tour.
Many of our best-known writers have their own museums, albeit part-time and with notice needed for some such as Joyce, Yeats, McGahern, Heaney, Kavanagh and Ledwidge. Lest you think it’s a boys’ club, we feature Dorothy McArdle, Edna O’Brien, Eithne Carbery, Kate O’Brien, Ella Young (with hat in video still) as well as Mary Mitchell and the Brontë sisters Irish connections.
Myths and Monsters Tour – 4 day Nationwide
Want to find the locations that are key to Irish mythology or sites that are associated with the macabre? From Cú Chulainn to the Morrigan, the Abhartach to the Dubh Dorachu, we’ll bring you there and tell you the stories along the way as featured in our terrifying Halloween Archive.
Ireland is awash with so many stories that chill the bones. Many of these places offer more than a grain of truth to them and we know where they are. This is a tour that we are happy to alter for you if at all possible. Just let us know what you wish to see and we will add it in if not too out of the way – like say Hy Brasil!
Shoulder season tour
West End Wonders – London’s theatreland
This walking tour will be available by request come the Autumn. This is a two hour tour that will start at the Oscar Wilde memorial opposite Charing Cross station. From there, we will take you to a host of sites that salute both the playwrights and actors who have come from Ireland and made it big.
We will of course share tales of all other theatreland greats where we pass them by. The tour will finally lead us to the Actors Church, hidden in plain sight on Covent Garden where the great Charles Macklin rests.
From there, we will retire to a local hostelry to salute this pantheon of wonder in the style Harris or O’Toole might expect!