The Printed Edit · N° 02
A 10-day Ireland itinerary, taken slowly.
Deborah Nunez, Editor
Ten days is the right amount of time. You stop racing. You start noticing the weather. This is the route we book for our own friends when they have the full window.
“Built from the route we send friends every week.”
Travelers with a full ten days who want depth, not distance.
Dublin · Connemara · Burren · Dingle · Ring of Kerry · Kinsale
Ten days is the first length at which Ireland stops being a tour and starts being a stay. The difference is not distance covered. It is the number of mornings you wake up somewhere you already know.
This edition is built on a single rule we do not break. Two nights minimum, everywhere, without exception, even when the map makes a single night look efficient. Efficiency is not the goal. Arrival is.
The route below runs Dublin, Connemara, the Burren, Dingle and Kenmare, with a Donegal alternative for readers who want the quieter version of the same idea. Every base has been slept in more than once, in more than one season.
Deborah Nunez, Editor
As printed, p. 3
14 printed pages. Tap any page to read it full size.
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Volume I · Ten days, five bases, no single nights · 14 pages
I
p. 5Why five bases, and why the order runs north to south.
Ten days will tempt you into eight stops. Resist it. Five bases across ten nights gives you two nights everywhere and a third somewhere, and that third night is where the trip actually happens.
Run the route north to south rather than the reverse. The weather generally moves with you, the drives shorten as you tire, and the last two days are the gentlest, which is the correct way to end.
II
p. 6Two nights in the city, then out through Wicklow.
The Dublin opening in a ten-day week can afford one thing the seven-day cannot: a day with nothing scheduled. Use it on foot, and use it south of the river.
Leave on the third morning through Wicklow, which is the correct decompression chamber between a city and a coast.
III
p. 7The one place in this route worth an extra night.
If you take a third night anywhere on this route, take it here. Connemara does not reveal itself on a schedule and the weather is a genuine variable, not a complaint.
The Sky Road, Inishbofin on the afternoon ferry when the sea allows, and one long day with no driving at all.
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p. 8Limestone, light, and the coast road that most people rush.
The Burren is the strangest landscape in Ireland and the one most often reduced to a photograph taken from a car park. Give it a grey afternoon on foot and it changes entirely.
The coast road from Galway to Doolin is the drive. The Cliffs are worth it at five thirty in the evening and almost never at noon.
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p. 9A peninsula that is better than the Ring, and quieter.
Slea Head is the finest short drive in Ireland. Two nights in Dingle lets you take it twice, once in whatever weather arrives and once in the weather you were hoping for.
Music in the town, but late, and in the rooms locals are actually standing in.
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p. 10The last three days, deliberately soft.
Kenmare is the right last base because nothing about it requires you to be anywhere. The Gap of Dunloe on foot, Beara instead of the Ring if the Ring is busy, and one dinner booked months in advance.
Fly from Cork or Shannon. Do not drive back to Dublin on the final morning. That drive has ruined more good weeks than bad weather ever has.
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p. 11The same ten days, taken north and taken quieter.
Readers who have already done the west, or who simply want fewer people in the frame, should run this route north instead. Donegal is the last part of the country that has not learned to expect visitors.
Slieve League over the Cliffs of Moher. Malin Head over Mizen. The trade is scale for solitude, and it is usually the right trade on a second trip.
The stays we would book ourselves for this edition, and the one line that explains why each is here.
Two nights, three if the weather turns. The fires are lit by four.
The dining room justifies the drive. Ask for a room facing the valley.
The old manners, done without ceremony.
For the northern variation. Long evenings, few Americans.
The opening two nights, if you want the city done properly.
Ten days is the length at which Ireland stops being seen and starts being lived in. Keep the two-night rule, take the third night in Connemara, and end somewhere soft.
The printed edition
The full edition is set in print and ready to read.
In short
TL;DR. The Long Way Round. A 10-day Ireland itinerary, taken slowly. Travelers with a full ten days who want depth, not distance.
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