Things to Do in County Limerick

More about County Limerick

Where to base yourself

The county is small enough that one base does it. Staying in the city puts you inside walking distance of the castle, the cathedral and the Milk Market, with hotels along the river and around the Georgian streets; it is also the only part of Limerick with much choice for dinner after nine. Weekday rates are usually the good ones — match days at Thomond Park and the mid-summer festival weekends are when the city fills.

Adare is the other obvious choice and a different kind of trip: thatch, antique shops, a handful of expensive rooms and the golf resort at Adare Manor beside it. It is fifteen minutes from the city on the N21 and it gets packed on summer afternoons, so if you stay there you get the village early and late, which is when it is worth having. For the hills, Kilfinnane and the villages around Ballyhoura have guesthouses and self-catering at a fraction of city prices and put the trailheads on your doorstep, and in the west Abbeyfeale or Ardagh work if you are here to cycle the greenway. Kilmallock is the pick for the medieval south-east.

The city on foot

Limerick city is flat, compact and best done in a loop. King John’s Castle on King’s Island is the ticketed anchor — a decent couple of hours with children, courtyard archaeology under glass and towers to climb — and St Mary’s Cathedral a few minutes away has been in use since 1168, with a set of 15th-century carved misericords that are the oldest of their kind in Ireland. The Slí na Sláinte walk rings the island and takes about an hour at a stroll.

Cross to the far bank for Clancy’s Strand, which gives you the best view back at the castle and the Treaty Stone, then work down the quays past the Custom House — Limerick’s finest 18th-century building, now the Hunt Museum. Arthur’s Quay Park is where the riverside walk widens out. Saturday morning is the day to be here: the Milk Market runs all week in some form but Saturday is the full food market, and it is undercover.

Lough Gur and the medieval south

Lough Gur, twenty minutes south-east of the city, is the oldest inhabited landscape in the country and easily half a day. Grange Stone Circle beside the road is the largest stone circle in Ireland, 113 stones, entered through a paved passage aligned on the midsummer sunrise; the ring forts and hut sites on Knockadoon Hill above the water fill out the picture, and the lakeshore visitor centre keeps shorter hours outside summer. Bruff and Herbertstown are the nearest villages for a coffee.

South again, Kilmallock still has stretches of its town wall, a medieval gate and the roofless Collegiate Church by the Loobagh — a walled town that never grew, which is why so much survives. Galbally sits under the Galtees with Moor Abbey in the fields, and the passage tomb at Darby’s Bed is a short uphill walk from the road nearby. At Ballyneety the Williamite siege train was blown up in Sarsfield’s night raid of 1690, an event the whole county still names things after.

Greenway, glens and hills

The Limerick Greenway is the county’s best free day out: 40 km of sealed, flat former railway from Rathkeale through Ardagh and Newcastle West to Abbeyfeale, with bike hire at several points and cafés along the way. You do not have to ride the whole thing — the Newcastle West to Abbeyfeale stretch, with its tunnel and viaduct, is the scenic half.

For walking, Ballyhoura has both waymarked loops and one of Ireland’s biggest mountain bike trail networks, free to use, with The Pinnacle above Kilfinnane as the short sharp climb. The Galtee Mountains on the Tipperary border are a serious ridge — Galtymore is 919 m and the ground above the forestry is exposed and often in cloud, so it needs a map, boots and a settled forecast. Much gentler: the Clare Glens near Murroe, a red sandstone gorge of waterfalls and pools with a looped riverside path that takes about an hour and is genuinely slippery after rain. Glenstal Abbey is next door, a working Benedictine monastery whose woodland and lake walks are open to visitors.

West to the estuary

The N69 runs out along the Shannon Estuary to Foynes, which in the late 1930s was the eastern terminus for transatlantic flying boats. The Foynes Flying Boat Museum keeps a full-size replica of a Boeing 314 you can walk through, along with the original terminal and radio room; it is also where Irish coffee was invented, and it closes for part of the winter, so check dates before making the drive. Nearby Askeaton has a Franciscan friary with a well-preserved cloister and the Desmond castle on its river rock, which is closed to visitors while conservation work goes on.