A note from Deborah. Read her editorial perspective
Ballybunion is the round most American golfers plan for years and then arrive at without a real plan for the days around it. That is the problem this piece is trying to solve. The round itself needs no help from us. The Old course on the north Kerry coast, with the Cashen estuary at one edge and the Atlantic cliffs from the 11th to the 17th, is the golf part of the trip and it will be the round you talk about at home. What we can help with is the shape of the three days that hold the round in place. Where to sleep on the arrival night, whether to base yourself in Ballybunion village or an hour inland at Adare, which dinner is the correct dinner in Listowel, how to build the morning of the round so you are neither rushed nor pacing the pro shop, what to do with the afternoon after eighteen holes, and how to spend the third morning before flying out of Shannon or driving south into Kerry. We have run this exact three day trip many times with visiting friends, and here is the sequence we would book if we were building it ourselves next month.
Three Days On The Shannon Estuary
The three day trip around Ballybunion is longer than it needs to be if the only goal is the round, and shorter than it should be if the goal is to see the corner of Kerry the round sits in. That is why three days is the right shape. Two days will get you the round and a dinner. Four days will drift, because north Kerry is a small landscape and the Ballybunion village itself is a working seaside town, not a resort you settle into for a week. Three days is the length that lets you land at Shannon, sleep well before the round, play the Old course on a rested morning, spend an unhurried evening on the coast, and leave the next day for either Shannon, Adare, or south into Kerry without the last morning feeling wasted.
The base we book is Adare Manor, the country house hotel in the village of Adare, fifty five minutes north of Ballybunion and thirty minutes from Shannon airport. You could stay in Ballybunion village itself, and we have written about the alternatives in our restaurant piece, but the three day trip works best when the arrival and departure sit at a serious hotel and the round sits in the middle. Adare is the right base for two of the three nights. The middle night, if you want to stay closer to the sea and eat properly in Ballybunion town, can move to the Listowel Arms in Listowel, ten minutes inland from the course. The rest of this piece assumes you are sleeping at Adare Manor on night one, moving to Listowel or staying at Adare on night two, and leaving on the morning of the third day.
The Arrival That Refuses To Be Rushed
The first decision of the trip is the arrival, and the American instinct is to fly into Dublin because Dublin is the airport they know. We would not do that. Dublin is a four hour drive from Ballybunion and it will burn the whole arrival day on the road. The correct arrival is to fly into Shannon on the overnight from the east coast, collect the car by ten in the morning, drive thirty minutes south to Adare, and give yourself the whole first day in the village and at the hotel. Dublin is a trip of its own and it will not be seen well from a stopover on the way to a golf round. Fold Dublin into a separate trip, or into the return leg after Kerry, but do not fold it into the arrival day of a Ballybunion trip.
Once you are at Adare Manor, the shape of the arrival day is straightforward. Check in, walk into Adare village along the river, look at the thatched cottages on the main street, and eat a light lunch at the Blue Door or 1826 Adare. Sleep for two hours in the afternoon, because the round is tomorrow morning and the flight has taken more from you than you think. Come down at seven for a drink at the Tack Room bar in the hotel, and then eat dinner in the Oak Room dining room. This is not the night to drive out for dinner. This is the night to eat in the hotel, sleep on Irish time, and be on the road to Ballybunion at nine the next morning with the group properly rested.
A Whiskey At Adare Before The Round Arrives
The Tack Room is the small bar off the hallway at Adare Manor, a wood panelled room with saddles on the walls and a fire in the winter months, and it is the pre-dinner drink of the trip. Order a whiskey rather than a pint on the arrival night, because the whiskey settles the group after the flight and the drive in a way a pint does not, and the bar has a proper Irish whiskey list with Redbreast, Green Spot, and Midleton by the pour. Sit for half an hour, read the room, and let the manor slow the group down before dinner. This is the pause that resets the trip.
The Oak Room is the fine dining room on the ground floor, and it is the correct arrival dinner because it does two things at once. It resets the trip after the flight and the drive, and it tells you what the food story of the west of Ireland is before you have made your other decisions about where to eat. Michael Tweedie cooks a tasting menu of Limerick beef, Atlantic seafood, and Kerry produce, and the room seats around forty at close spacing. Book it the week you book the round, ask for a table around eight, and eat the tasting menu if the group is up for it. Drink one glass of wine, not three. The round is at ten the next morning and the drive is an hour.
The Slow Drive Down To Ballybunion
The round at Ballybunion is the reason for the trip, and the mistake most American groups make on the morning of it is to be on the road too early. The tee time will be between nine and eleven for a visitor, and the drive from Adare is fifty five minutes on a quiet weekday morning through Askeaton, Foynes, and Tarbert on the ferry side of the estuary. Leave the hotel two hours before the tee, not three. That gives you time for a slow breakfast in the Oak Room, a proper cup of coffee, and an arrival at the clubhouse thirty minutes before the tee, not ninety. The clubhouse at Ballybunion is modest by American resort standards, and there is nothing to do in the extra hour except pace the pro shop and buy things you do not need.
Once at the clubhouse, meet the caddie at the caddie shed, warm up on the practice ground for twenty minutes, and put five putts on the practice green at slower speed than you think. The greens on the front nine are the same speed as the practice green, and the greens on the cliff stretch are faster and firmer, so the warm up putts are calibration for the opening holes rather than for the whole round. The round itself is covered in full in our companion piece How to play Ballybunion, and we would read that piece the night before, not the morning of. On the morning of the round, the reading is done. The job now is to hit the first fairway with a hybrid, not the graveyard with a driver.
What The Cliffs Take Out Of You
The round at Ballybunion will finish around three in the afternoon on a nine or ten o'clock tee time, and the temptation is to drive straight back to Adare and eat dinner there. We would not do that. The correct afternoon is a pint at the clubhouse terrace looking back down the 18th fairway, a shower and a change in the car park, and a drive into Ballybunion village to walk on the strand for half an hour before dinner. Ballybunion is a working Kerry seaside town, not a golf resort, and the walk on the strand at low tide is the part of the day that separates the trip from a resort weekend. Do not skip it. Put shoes and a jacket in the car for exactly this purpose.
For dinner on the round night, the room to book is Daroka on Main Street in Ballybunion, upstairs above the pub of the same name, with a small dining room that looks out over the Atlantic. Rob Canavan cooks a short menu of Kerry seafood and steaks off the local grid, and the room seats around thirty. It is the correct celebration dinner because it is a five minute walk from where the round was played, the wine list is honest, and the atmosphere is closer to a working town restaurant than to a hotel dining room. Our full restaurant guide to Ballybunion and north Kerry covers the alternatives, including when to drive south to Tralee or inland to Listowel for a different room. On round night, we book Daroka. Every time.
The Night That Belongs To Listowel
The second night sleep is the piece of the trip most American groups overthink. You have two honest options. Drive the fifty five minutes back to Adare Manor after dinner and sleep at the same hotel two nights running, or check into the Listowel Arms in Listowel, ten minutes inland from Ballybunion, and take the shorter drive home from Daroka. We have done both. The Adare drive after dinner is a straight run on a quiet road at nine in the evening, and if the group has a designated driver it is not a hard drive. The Listowel Arms is a modest historic hotel on the square in Listowel, well kept and unpretentious, and the ten minute drive back from dinner is a genuinely different feel to the trip.
The rule we follow is this. If the group is a foursome that wants two nights of the same hotel bed and a return to a serious dining room for a nightcap, sleep at Adare Manor both nights and drive back. If the group is a foursome that wants the trip to feel like a working Kerry visit and would rather sleep ten minutes from the course than an hour from it, take the second night at the Listowel Arms and return to Adare only on the morning of day three. Both work. Neither is wrong. What is wrong is booking two hotels on night one, deciding on the road, and paying for a room you do not sleep in.
The Last Morning: Cashen, Kerry, Or Home
The morning of the third day is the piece most American groups leave unplanned, and that is the piece that most often gets wasted. You have three honest options and the group should agree on one of them the night before, not at breakfast. The first is the Cashen course, the Trent Jones second eighteen at Ballybunion, played on a nine o'clock tee time as a second round on the property before the drive back to Shannon. It is a fine round, less famous than the Old, and it is the correct choice if the group came primarily to play golf and the flight is a late one. The second is a drive south into Kerry, on to Killarney and Kenmare, extending the trip by a night or two at Sheen Falls Lodge or Park Hotel Kenmare, and folding Ballybunion into a wider Kerry itinerary rather than treating it as a self contained round.
The third is the honest short version. Sleep in, eat a slow breakfast, and drive back to Shannon in time for an afternoon flight home, with the round done and the trip closed cleanly at three days. Any of the three is a good ending. What matters is that the group picks one before the round on day two, so that the tee sheet, the hotel booking, and the flight time all line up. For the shape of the wider trip, our seven day southern golf itinerary covers the full run of Ballybunion, Lahinch, and Waterville in the order we would build it. For where to sleep on the way south into Kerry, our full Ireland stay guide covers Sheen Falls, Park Hotel Kenmare, and the Kerry country houses we book. Book the round the month you plan the trip, book the dinners the week you book the round, and pick the third morning before you fly. That is the sequence. It works every time.
Further reading from the Notebook
- How to play Ballybunion
- Where to eat around Ballybunion after a round
- How to play Lahinch
- Where to eat around Lahinch after a round
- Three days around Royal County Down
- Royal County Down, shot by shot
- Portmarnock, shot by shot
- Kerry or Connemara, how to decide
- Seven-day golf itinerary, south
- Where to sleep in Ireland
- Build your trip around this round
- The Printed Edit, Greens and Gorse