The sunny southeast, and what that actually means
Wexford calls itself the sunny southeast, and unlike most regional slogans in Ireland this one has weather data behind it. The corner of the country between Rosslare and Hook Head takes the least rain and the most sunshine hours in the Republic. For an American planning a trip in May or September, that is a real argument.
It is also the county the Normans landed in, in 1169, which is why the landscape carries more castles, tower houses and abbey ruins per mile than almost anywhere else and why the place names stop sounding Irish and start sounding French halfway down the Hook peninsula.
And it is close. Wexford town is ninety minutes from Dublin on the M11. For anyone landing in Dublin and unwilling to face a four hour drive west on day one, this is the softest possible first move.
The three Wexfords, and which one you actually want
The county splits along the coast, and the three sections have almost nothing in common.
- The Hook peninsula
- A flat limestone finger with the oldest operational lighthouse in the world at the end of it, black and white banded, working since the 1200s. Loftus Hall, Tintern Abbey, Dunbrody Abbey and Baginbun beach are all on the same loop. This is the best half day in the southeast.
- Wexford town and the north
- A narrow-laned harbour town with an opera festival that punches far above the county, plus the Irish National Heritage Park just outside it, which is the single best place in Ireland to take children who are bored of ruins.
- Kilmore Quay and the beaches
- Thatched cottages, a working fishing harbour, the Saltee Islands offshore, and the long strands at Curracloe and Carne. Curracloe is where the Normandy landing scenes in Saving Private Ryan were filmed, which surprises most American visitors standing on it.
The Kennedy question, answered properly
Patrick Kennedy, great-grandfather of President John F. Kennedy, left a cottage at Dunganstown near New Ross in 1848. The Kennedy Homestead is still farmed by his descendants and now holds a small, seriously good museum about the emigration and the return. President Kennedy visited in 1963, four months before Dallas.
Ten minutes away in New Ross sits the Dunbrody Famine Ship, a full-scale reconstruction of an 1840s emigrant vessel with costumed interpreters below deck. Together they take a morning and they are the most emotionally direct three hours of Irish-American history anywhere in the country.
If you have family who left Ireland in the famine years, do these two in one morning and then eat lunch in New Ross without a plan afterwards. Everyone we have sent has needed the hour.
Driving Wexford, honestly
Wexford town is ninety minutes from Dublin on the M11, and Rosslare Europort another twenty. The road is easy and mostly motorway, which makes this the gentlest first drive in the country for a nervous left-hand driver.
The Hook peninsula loop from Wexford town is about an hour each way, and the R733 and R734 are narrow but quiet. Allow four hours for the loop with stops at the lighthouse and Tintern Abbey. There is a small ferry from Ballyhack to Passage East that puts you into Waterford in ten minutes and saves fifty minutes of driving round the estuary. Take it.
Do not attempt Wexford and Waterford as one day. They are close enough to look combinable on a map and they are two separate days on the ground.