Edinburgh’s Old Town stretches along a ridge to the east of the Castle, and tumbles down Victoria Street to the broad expanse of the Grassmarket. It’s a jagged and jumbled maze of masonry riddled with close’s (alleys) and winds (narrow lanes), stairs and vaults, and...
On the road from Limerick to Killarney is Adare (Ath Dara, the ford of the oaks) on the river Maigue. In its well-wooded setting, with medieval church ruins and neat thatched cottages, it is a surprisingly lovely village. Once an O’Donovan stronghold, it was taken...
It was in the Mournes I learnt that there is no better way to know the nerve of a mountain than by walking up a stream to its source. And by that I mean walking in the stream. Every step is a watery one, and...
Anyone who’s belted a little white ball around a fairway will probably have heard of St Andrews. Apart from its historical links with golf though, this is one of Scotland’s most charming and enjoyable towns to explore. Walking around The Scores, with the wide sweep...
Ardmore, with its smooth beach, its colour-washed cottages and green fields is the pleasantest of places. It was once an Episcopal see which for centuries ranked high among the high places of Ireland. For it is said to have been founded by St. Declan who...
It may look innocuous on the map, but the capital Gulf of Corryvreckan – the 1km wide channel between the Northern end of Jura and the Island of Scarba – is home to one of the 3 most notorious tidal whirlpools in the world (the...
The Custom House, erected between the years 1781 and 1791, at a cost of £546,000, is the finest public building in Dublin; it represents the flowering of Dublin commerce and Irish parliamentary power in the 18th century. James Gandon, whose master piece it was, and...
The ‘Bonny Banks’ and ‘Bonny Braes’ of Loch Lomond have long been Glasgow’s rural retreat – a scenic region of hills, lochs, and healthy fresh air within easy reach of Scotland’s largest city. Since the 1930’s Glaswegians have made a regular weekend exodus to the...
Groined by deep glens and walled along the west by the bare hilltops and the tufted moors, this rim of arable that ends in foam… The lovely Nine Glens bite deeply into the basalts of the Antrim plateau and into the hard overlays of modern history....
The remote Cowal Peninsula is cut off from the rest of the country by the lengthy fjords of Loch Long and Lough Fyne – it’s an area more accessible by boat than by car. It is comprised of narrow hills and rugged lochs with only...