The Irish Times is running a competition to find the best way to spend the day in Ireland. We'd like to find the country's best historic sites, outdoor adventures, visitor centres and experiences to share with family and friends.
We want the help of our readers in discovering them. You are invited to compose a short pitch for a place you love to visit, by going to irishtimes.com/bestdayout and telling us in no more than 500 words why your place deserves to win.
The competition will cover all counties of Ireland, north and south. “Days out” include heritage experiences, visitor centres, pampering and relaxation experiences, maritime fun like kayaking, surfing or coasteering, galleries and museums, or a combined adventure, leisure and relaxation day topped off with a great meal or overnight stay.
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Do you know of a quirky museum most of us have never heard of, a great falconry experience or cookery school, a visit to a cave or a toy museum? Do you engage in high- adrenaline experiences such as stack climbing, water zorbing, cliff diving or potholing? Do you go in for unusual dates: seaweed baths in the west, ziplining in the mountains, canoeing to an island for a picnic? Tell us about it here. [Story continues below]
[ Hugh Linehan's Best Day Out: Titanic Quarter Belfast ]
[ Arminta Wallace's Best day Out: Glendalough ]
[ Rosita Boland's personal tour of Dublin ]
[ NOMINATE your ownOpens in new window ]
The Best Days Out competition will be broken into five categories: Couples, Families, Great Outdoors, Heritage, and Hidden Wonders.
This is the fourth such competition run by The Irish Times. In 2012 we named Westport, Co Mayo, as the Best Place to Live in Ireland; in 2013, Loop Head, Co Clare, won the title of Best Place to Holiday in Ireland; and in 2014, with an emphasis on outdoor activity, we chose Erris, Co Mayo, as the Best Place to Go Wild in Ireland.
In all these contests, the information supplied by the public has been central, and finding a winner is only one of the goals. We also want to gather as much information as possible from those who know it best and to share it with our readers over the coming weeks. So get writing.
Our judges – the travel journalists Róisín Finlay, Manchán Magan, Fionola Meredith and Gary Quinn – will scour the country to assess what's out there. We'll keep you informed about what secrets we're uncovering as we go. The winner will be announced in June.
- CONOR GOODMAN
HUGH LINEHAN on the Titanic Quarter, Belfast "The best family trip on this island"
Belfast is wonderful for only two or three days, apparently. Or so the Game of Thrones star Kit Harington answered recently when asked how he had enjoyed working there for the past five years.
So what price the Titanic Quarter, the city’s biggest tourist investment since the peace process? For me it’s the best family trip on this island. You could just about cram it into a single day, but two days would be even better. And, if you happen to be travelling from Dublin in the company of a railway-obsessed small boy, for whom the words “Dundalk, Newry, Portadown . . . ” are more magical than “Paris, Venice, Istanbul”, then that’s your weekend sorted.
Built on the brownfield rubble of Belfast’s old docklands, the Quarter still has a raw, unfinished feel in places. There is also a bit of that fur-coat-no-knickers vibe you get from all projects completed towards the tail end of the building boom. Huge glass- and-steel constructions bump up against vacant sites; empty shopfronts are tarted up with lifesize pictures of fictionalised happy customers. A few pop-up shops sell vintage clothes and designer coffees.
On a sunny day, though, it’s all perfectly pleasant for a riverside stroll to the main events.
The great Paint Hall, which now serves as the studio for Game of Thrones, looms a few hundred metres away from the Titanic Experience, an angular, multifaceted, shiplike hulk that rears into the sky above the old slipways and refurbished riverbanks of the Lagan.
Inside, escalators lead up into the “experience” – not a museum (although there are historical artefacts) but a sort of curated interactive journey. First it takes you through the history of 19th-century Belfast, with its booming linen industry, its sectarian and social tensions, the rise of shipbuilding and the reshaping of the Lagan estuary to accommodate ever larger ships. Then it’s on to the history of the great liners, particularly of the doomed you-know-what.
Blame Leo and Kate, but for some reason the sinking of the Titanic seems to have colonised contemporary young imaginations to an extraordinary extent. I have to confess I don't quite get that fascination, but the Titanic Experience does succeed in approaching the familiar tragedy in fresh, interesting and evocative ways.
It is well worth a family trip to in itself, but it is outshone by its neighbour W5.
This oddly named science and discovery centre – W5 stands for whowhatwhenwherewhy, as you ask – is spread over several floors, with hundreds of hands-on interactive gizmos allowing you to explore all sorts of scientific principles in entertaining and exciting ways.
There are practical demonstrations throughout the day and temporary exhibitions on the go all the time. It is part science lab, part the best playground you’ve ever been to. The staff are young, engaged and knowledgeable. The W5 website recommends you allow at least two hours for your visit. We spent six and could have stayed longer.
Both of these celebrations of scientific inquiry and technological innovation, which happen to be in the only part of the country that has a strong industrial tradition, are staged on a scale and with an eye for drama and entertainment that puts most of their equivalents south of the Border in the shade.
But save the cultural stereotypes for another day: these are two of the best places in Ireland to take your kids, and they're next door to each other. If you're travelling to Belfast to see them, there's the added benefit of spending a couple of days in a city that, as any inhabitant of Westeros will tell you, is a great place to spend a day or two – or even three. [Back to top]
ARMINTA WALLACE on Glendalough, Co Wicklow
‘Heaven on earth for hikers of all ages’
The outrageous beauty of Glendalough has been drawing hermits, pilgrims and busloads of tourists to this part of Co Wicklow for hundreds of years. For fans of Celtic spirituality it’s a “thin place” where the boundary between heaven and earth shimmers and pops, allowing for easy transfer between one dimension and the other.
For hillwalkers it is simply heaven on earth. It has a fistful of colour-coded hiking trails to suit all ages, abilities and weather conditions, it’s an easy drive from Dublin – or there’s the St Kevin’s bus service, a legend in its own right – and it is surrounded by attractive watering holes, so you don’t even have to go to the bother of packing a picnic lunch.
Start the day by nipping into Avoca Handweavers, just off the N11 at Kilmacanogue. You are not going to linger, so get there early – it opens at 9am during the week, 9.30am at weekends – and get yourself some nutritional fuel for the day ahead.
I’d recommend the organic scrambled egg from the Fern House, but stay off the prosecco with orange juice and strawberries: you’ve got climbing to do!
Once you have reoriented yourself southwards, which takes a bit of fiddling about with roundabouts – if you need petrol, make sure you fill up at this point, as the Wicklow Mountains are short on service stations – it will take you about 40 minutes to reach the Glendalough visitor centre and car park.
Get yourself booted and suited and follow the white walking route along the Green Road, then up, up, up past the Poulanass Waterfall and the 600 steps of the boardwalk to the top of the Spinc, where you can gaze smugly down at the lake far, far below.
Then it’s onwards along the top of the cliffs before wending down through blanket bog into the Glenealo valley – where you’ll probably encounter deer and, if you’re really, really lucky, peregrine falcons.
Cross the footbridge before scrambling down through the Miners Village and along the shores of the Upper Lake to where you started. About nine kilometres in length, the white route at Glendalough takes about three hours and climbs to almost 400m.
Physically, it’s quite demanding. Don’t be tempted to do it in the opposite direction; descending those boardwalk steps can be a slippery business, especially if you have kids on board.
But apart from its jawdropping views, it offers that rare combination, for the walker, of complete peace of mind – the clear signposting means you won’t get lost – with the chance to experience a wild and relatively unspoilt mountain landscape.
And sure what’s the rush? The whole point of being out in the hills is, well, to be out in the hills. Linger, wander, enjoy.
And work up an appetite for dinner at the Wicklow Heather, where local produce, first-class service and a whiskey-tasting menu offer a happy ending for your outdoor expedition.
In fact happy isn't the word for it. Heavenly. That's the thing. [Back to top]
ROSITA BOLAND's personal tour of Dublin Marsh’s, museums and movies
Travel is the gift that keeps giving, and the gift I treasure most from the places I’ve travelled in abroad are the friends I made there. As a result I get a lot of visitors passing through my home in Dublin.
There isn’t always time to take them west, to the places I love most in Ireland. So, to try to maximise the often short time that my overseas guests have, I’ve devised my own tour of Dublin.
It’s entirely personal, but here’s what I show my guests in what I consider to be the best day out in Dublin. I don’t (usually) do them all in one day, but these are my greatest and proven hits.
Casino at Marino
I first saw William Chambers's architectural tardis many years ago, as a history student, before it was restored. I loved it then, and I still do. Everyone I've ever brought there, be they children or adults, loves its tiny, exquisite rooms, the secrets and tricks of perspective, and the four stone lions.
Chester Beatty Library
Visiting this (free) trove of beautiful paper-based religious and spiritual ephemera is like temporarily stepping out of time. I always make my visitors watch the astonishing short video of Chester Beatty's life before taking them to the Zen roof garden and then showing them the rooms that showcase ever-changing displays of carved jade, miniature paintings, jewelled books and all the other arcane things I love there. For me it's like being back in Asia again.
Irish Film Institute Archive at Lunchtime
The IFI puts on free showings of short films and documentaries, focusing on Irish life and culture, with a double bill on Saturdays. They usually last less than an hour, and there's always some fascinating period footage I haven't even seen myself. It's a totally different insight into Ireland for visitors.
Book of Kells and Long Room
I've been to this part of Trinity College Dublin so often that I no longer accompany my visitors, but the magnificent barrel-ceilinged library is the most outstanding room the visiting public can see in Ireland – a must-see.
Marsh's Library
That each book is still shelved in the same place as it was when the library first opened, in 1707, is something that never fails to amaze me. James Joyce's name is written in the visitor's book. There is a signed copy of one of John Donne's books, my favourite metaphysical poet. This chilly, atmospheric piece of living history is very special.
Between all this slogging around the city I do feed my guests: a platter of oysters and brown bread at the Meeting House Square market, and then the mandatory pint of Guinness at my favourite pub in Dublin, which is also a landmark period building, the Stag’s Head.
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The Best Day Out contest is a partnership between The Irish Times and Discoverireland.ie. The nomination form, full explanation of the competition and terms and conditions are here
