The great walking tours of Ireland
Follow your feet, meet the Irish and enjoy the best of the Emerald Isle
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May through October is walking tour season in Ireland. And there’s nothing quite like a walking tour in the company of a local Irish guide to make you feel welcome and get to know the cities and towns of Ireland.
If you are arriving in Dublin, look up Pat Liddy, a well-known historian, author and artist. Pat and his team of tour guides offer five different walks with different themes – Trinity College & Georgian Dublin; Mummies, Spirits & Hidden City; Viking & Medieval Quarter, Celts & Cathedrals; and Dublin Highlights.
Each tour reveals little-known facts and stories about Dublin and its landmarks. Tours depart from the front of the Dublin Tourism Office, Suffolk St. or the Dublin Bus Office on O’Connell St. Duration: approx. 1-2 hours. More Information: tel. mobile #818-205-205, www.walkingtours.ie
By the time the tour ends, you may have sore feet but also a good grasp of the city’s history and prime sights. Most important, you’ll have seen Dublin through the eyes of a Dubliner, and that beats taking a bus ride or boat cruise.
Other companies that also offer walking tours in Dublin include Historical Walking Tours of Dublin (www.historicalinsights.ie); Literary, Historical & Musical Tours (www.dublinwalkingtour.com); Literary Pub Crawl (www.dublinpubcrawl.com); Traditional Irish Musical Pub Crawl (www.discoverdublin.ie); and the 1916 Rebellion Tour (www.1916rising.com).
Moving into the Irish countryside, walking tours with local guides first started in Wexford Town, an easy and interesting stroll for visitors with its narrow streets and sprinkling of Viking and Norman landmarks.
In the mid-1960’s, members of the Old Wexford Society, a social club for history buffs, began taking tourists on Walking Tours of Historic Wexford each evening on a voluntary basis to encourage more tourism for the Southeast of Ireland. Today this service is carried on by the local Wexford Tourist Office, to provide a walking encyclopedia of Wexford facts and trivia.
The tour route wends its way along Wexford’s long main street, evolved over the centuries from a Viking market trail, including narrow passageways such as Keyser’s Lane, a corridor so narrow that you can shake hands with someone walking on the opposite footpath. Other points along the route include town walls and tollgates as well as Selskar Abbey, dating back to the 12th century; St. Iberius Church, built in 1660; the Bullring, a market square where bull-bating was introduced in 1621; and the Cornmarket, once the central marketplace. Tours commence daily from White’s Hotel, Main St. Duration: 1 hour. More information: tel. 053-916-1155; www.wexfordtourism.com
Forty miles to the west, Viking sites are similarly the focus of Walking Tours of Historic Waterford, conducted by award-winning guide, Jack Burtchaell. Jack puts his tour members to work immediately by asking for volunteers to play the roles of Strongbow, Aoife, Diarmuid MacMurrough, and other leading characters in Waterford’s early centuries.
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