Rainy day activities in County Clare

Ennis carries a wet morning better than anywhere else in the county. Clare Museum on Arthur’s Row is free and covers 6,000 years in about an hour, and the Franciscan friary a few minutes’ walk away keeps its 15th- and 16th-century limestone carving — the McMahon tomb, the St Francis effigy — under a modern roof. Both are walkable from the centre of the county town, and the lanes between them hold the pubs that made Ennis a trad town.

North of that, the picks spread across the Burren. Aillwee Cave at Ballyvaughan runs a 45-minute guided tour roughly 90 metres under the limestone, past an underground river and a frozen waterfall, which is the one attraction here that improves in bad weather. Dysert O’Dea, south of Corofin, pairs a 15th-century tower house with a roof-walk that will only be worth climbing if the cloud lifts. The Burren Smokehouse outside Lisdoonvarna is free, indoors, and ends in a tasting.

Evenings are simpler. Fitz’s Pub at Hotel Doolin runs a session every night of the year, so it is the dependable option if the rain has flattened everything else. The Cliffs of Moher and the Aran ferries from Doolin both need booking and both need the weather to co-operate, so leave them loose rather than building the day around them.