Ireland Road Trip: Driving the West Coast

The thing that really makes a driving holiday in Ireland is the stunning coast line. Around every corner you're hit with a new view, totally different from the last. Sometimes you see lush greenery, other times you get jagged, hard rock faces - all overlooking crashing waves that hide the small hope of seeing a visiting whale or seal.

Ireland Road Trip: Driving to Clonakilty

We knew that once we left Cork we just wanted to find the sea. We wanted to take coastal driving routes and see little villages and towns that we'd never heard of before, and once you're a few kilometres down the road that's exactly what you find. We knew we wanted to get to Clonakilty for our next B&B, but we had all day to get there so we headed up, up, up some steep roads to get a real sense of why Ireland is known as the Emerald Isle.

Ireland Road Trip: Kissing the Blarney Stone

I wasn't that bothered about visiting Blarney Castle after reading a few reviews that said it was overcrowded, overhyped and overpriced. But it was raining and we needed somewhere to go that wasn't a million miles from Cork where we were still based, so we made our way there praying that the weather would improve.

Ireland Road Trip: Kinsale and Cobh

One quiet weekday evening, my boyfriend and I were watching Calvary on Netflix. The film is a black comedy set in rural Ireland which got us thinking, why not drive around the Emerald Isle for our next holiday? So, a few week's later we flew into Cork, hired a car and roughly planned a route along the south-west coast to see some rugged coastlines. We stayed in Cork for three nights, using it a our base to explore some of the little towns and villages nearby.