Wild Atlantic Way North: Travel through ancient kingdoms and lyrical landscapes from Galway to Donegal via Yeats Country and the Ancient Irish Rainforest.

Routes include:

• Leenaun to Louisburgh to Westport: This may be Ireland’s best kept secret drive. Its stunning remoteness and beauty gives this Galway-Mayo road a timeless quality as you cross over mountain and bogland.

• Westport: This welcoming town crackles with traditional Irish music and keen country talk no matter what time of the year you visit. Matt Molloy’s pub on Bridge St. is the Mayo mecca of musicians from around the world.

• National Museum of Ireland: Country Life, Castlebar. This wonderful homage to rural life sits easily in a modern building on the grounds of Turlough Park House, a High Victorian Gothic edifice, the ancestral home of the Fitzgerald family of Turlough. It’s an excellent lunch stop, with an on-site café offering fresh fare in a country courtyard setting.

• Donegal Town: The quiet town of Donegal belies a northwestern spirit of independence and pride that make this remote county truly a place apart.

• Killybegs fishing port: Where better to stop and observe sometimes relaxed, sometimes raucous rhythms of life along the Wild Atlantic Way?

• Glencolumbcille: The glen of Saint Colmcille (aka Columba) still resonates with the pioneering spirit of the sixth-century missionary who founded the iconic monastery of Iona, off the coast of Scotland.

• Glenveagh National Park: Take a tour and a hike through one of Ireland’s most beautiful national parks, set on the dramatic estate of Glenveagh Castle. Learn of the castle’s dark history as you stroll through gardens that are the horticultural legacy of Lady Cornelia Adair.

• Wild Ireland nature reserve: This wildlife preserve is the brainchild of a local lawyer with a passion for animals. In a remote forest in Burnfoot, outside Derry, Killian McLaughlin has recreated the ancient habitats of the Celtic rainforest, creating room to roam for long-extinct creatures from Irish history such as wolves, brown bears, and wild boar.

• The Celtic Peace Garden. Founded by the late Father Brendan Carlin, this restful repose is a monument in miniature to the lives of the Irish saints, and to the cause of unity in a long-troubled land.

• Derry City and tour of the City Walls: The tour ends in Derry, a city that delights visitors with its citizens’ wit and warmth, and which now looks forward to a brighter future.

Outstanding Experience:

• Sligo, Yeats Country

The northwestern county of Sligo is called Yeats Country for its influence on the work of Ireland’s greatest poet and his brother, an equally gifted painter. William and Jack Butler Yeats spent much of their childhoods in Sligo, and landscapes like the Isle of Inishfree in Lough Gill, Knocknarea Mountain, and Rosses Point Peninsula inspired many great works.

A visit to the Yeats Memorial Museum brings W.B.’s poetry to life, while a visit to his grave in Drumcliff Churchyard, is a poignant reminder to “Cast a cold eye, on life, on death,” as the Nobel Laureat’s tombstone beseeches. “Horseman pass by.”