Things to Do in County Kildare

More about County Kildare

Where to base yourself

A lot of people never base themselves in Kildare at all — the county starts about 25 km from Dublin and almost everything in it is a day trip from the city on the M4, the M7 or a commuter train. If you do want to stay, Naas is the most practical: the county town, on the motorway, with hotels, restaurants and Punchestown ten minutes away. Maynooth is the nicest to walk around, a university town with the canal, the castle ruin and a good run of places to eat, and it is on the train line to Dublin. Newbridge puts you next to the Curragh and the outlet shopping. Kildare Town itself is small but sits between the Stud, the racecourse and the bog. In the south of the county, Athy is the base for the Barrow, and Kilkea Castle nearby is a FitzGerald keep turned hotel if you want the grand version.

The pinch points are race days rather than the summer. Beds around Naas and Newbridge disappear for the Punchestown festival in late April and again for Derby weekend at the Curragh at the end of June, and prices go with them. Book those specifically; the rest of the year Kildare is easy.

Horse country

The Curragh is 2,000 hectares of unfenced common grazing, the oldest and flattest piece of turf in Irish racing, and you can drive across it and watch strings working on the gallops in the early morning for nothing. The racecourse on its edge stages all five Irish Classics, including the Irish Derby. Jump racing’s home is Punchestown outside Naas, whose five-day festival at the end of the season is as much a social event as a sporting one.

The Irish National Stud at Tully is the place to go if you want to actually get near horses. It runs guided tours through the stallion boxes and the foaling unit, and the ticket also covers the Japanese Gardens — laid out between 1906 and 1910 by Tassa Eida and his son, and the best surviving Edwardian Japanese garden in Europe — plus the more recent St Fiachra’s Garden. It works on a season roughly from February to Christmas, so check before travelling in deep winter. If military history is more your thing, the Curragh Military Museum inside the camp covers the Irish Army from 1922, but access is by arrangement rather than drop-in.

Canals, the Barrow and the towpaths

Kildare is the county where Ireland’s inland waterways cross, and the towpaths are the best flat walking and cycling in Leinster. The Grand Canal reaches its summit level at Robertstown, a Georgian canal village that was a hotel stop for barge passengers and now mostly serves walkers. Just downstream the Leinster Aqueduct carries the canal over the River Liffey on five arches, built in the 1780s and still working — you can stand on the towpath and watch one waterway pass over another. Sallins has the harbour, a couple of good places to eat and barge trips in season.

South of that the Barrow Way follows the river towpath from the canal at Lowtown down through Athy and on into Carlow. It is level, grassy in places, and you can take it in pieces — an afternoon from Athy is enough to get the idea. Monasterevin earned its nickname from the sheer number of bridges and aqueducts stacked up where canal, river and railway all cross in one small town.

Round towers, high crosses and unfinished houses

Kildare’s early Christian stone is unusually good for a county this close to the capital. St Brigid’s Cathedral in Kildare Town stands on the site of her 5th-century monastery, and its round tower is one of the very few in Ireland you can actually climb — seasonally, for a small charge, up ladders to an open top with a view over the plain. The granite high cross at Moone is the one to make a detour for: nearly 5.3 m tall, carved in flat, almost cartoon-like panels, and sheltered inside the roofed ruin of the old church, free and open.

For Norman and later work, Maynooth Castle is a FitzGerald keep at the gates of the university, open free in summer under the OPW. Jigginstown outside Naas is the shell of the largest brick building attempted in 17th-century Ireland, abandoned when its builder, Strafford, was executed in 1641. Carbury and the Hill of Allen both give you ruins and a long view over the bogland from hills that barely register as hills anywhere else.

Woods, bog and wet weather

Donadea Forest Park is the county’s default outdoor afternoon: a 2 km lake loop, the ruins of Aylmer Castle, a walled garden and a 9/11 memorial to a Kildare-born New York firefighter. There’s pay-and-display parking and it stays open year-round. Killinthomas Wood near Rathangan is worth timing — the bluebells there in late April and early May are among the best displays in Leinster and last a fortnight at most.

For rain, Newbridge Silverware combines a working factory with a museum of film and fashion costume, and the bog centre at Lullymore gives you the raised bog on a boardwalk without the wet feet.