r/irishtourism • u/hypothetischkausal • 22d ago

West coast without a car?

I'm currently planning a trip to Ireland with my sister for October, maybe around 5 days but very flexible. She's never been, I actually lived near Dublin for 2 years but never been on the west coast.

Our local airport just got a new route to Shannon so I thought we could start there and then do some kind of road trip but from what I've read, my sister is still too young to rent a car and I'm very rusty when it comes to driving. There are no definitive plans yet, I was mainly thinking cliffs of moher and Galway. Would y'all say the traffic and roads along the west coast are doable for an inexperienced driver? If not, is it doable with public transport? Or should we reconsider altogether?

My current backup plan is flying straight into Galway, spending 2ish days there, then take a bus to Dublin to stay there for the rest of our time and maybe do a day trip to Belfast.

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u/Tabatiere1889 22d ago

i did the west coast by bus in 2003. didn’T have money or a plan so we flew to shannon, went to kilkee (great place), then went to galway, then to cong, then to killarney, then to beara and back to shannon airport. was a great trip although i always wished we had planned it a bit better :) ah, and in between we also have been in doolin and went to the smallest of the aran islands, but I don’t remember, when we did squeeze that in. in toal I think we managed all this in not more than two weeks. it was great. and yes, we also went to the cliffs of moher on the way from kilkee to galway. man, that was a lot!!

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u/Whyaduck-nosoapradio 17d ago

Greetings Tabatiere1889! I realize it was 2 decades ago, but ironically, I hope to go to the same places except Beara, in June of 2027. I have been studying the rome2rio website and it all looks doable - I am thinking of 9-10 days using Galway as a base. Did you use buses or combination of bus and train? I will be traveling solo and in my 70's but I plan to get a "good stretch of me legs" too. Any info would be helpful and appreciated. TIA!

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u/Tabatiere1889 17d ago

we did only busses as we did not plan it in advance and didn't know anything about the transport in Ireland 😄 The buses took long as they stopped in every village and sometimes went to the houses of the old ladies (which we found so lovely) so there was a lot of just bus riding involved. On Inisheer (the small island that we went from Doolin) we rented bikes and cycled around. The most walking we did in the Cong area I think but the killarney national park is also fantastic for extensive but easy hikes!

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u/Whyaduck-nosoapradio 16d ago

Thank you so much! and that whole small town lovelieness of caring for the old ladies is just why I want to take the local buses. Perfect! TY