February 2012

How would you like to eat your way through Ireland? Or get such an insider’s view of the countryside that you’re climbing over stone walls and pushing through hedges, maybe even with a famous Irish writer? Or dance every night away to some great Irish music—and maybe even do a little dancing while you’re still on the sightseeing bus?

If those trips sound appealing, you’re no ordinary tourist. And you’re going to love these off-the-beaten track tours that we’ve found. Click on the links to read about trips that will take you down back roads, through back gardens, and back behind the scenes.

Explore Sligo and Ireland’s West with the natives. Bring boots–you may be crossing farmer’s fields to find some hidden treasures. Read about Wild West Irish Tours. 

If you’re tone deaf, Trad Tours aren’t for you. A local Irish radio host knows where the best music in Ireland is. And sometimes, she brings it with her. Read about Trad Tours.

Imagine traveling to Ireland with an Irish cookbook author. You don’t have to imagine it. Taste the “Flavors of Ireland” with the author of more than six popular Irish “cookery books.” Read about the Flavors of Ireland tour.

You'll visit Ben Bulben--and some secret places thereabouts.

If Michael Waugh said to you, “How would you like to come with me to Ireland for 10 days to meet all my neighbors?” you might not jump at the chance. But the small groups who’ve traveled to Ireland’s West on Waugh’s “Wild West Irish Tours” have enjoyed every minute of his tours to his old ‘hood.

After all, one of Waugh’s neighbors is Dermot Healy, award-winning novelist, playwright and poet. They became such good friends that when Waugh took up residence in Sligo after retiring from the U.S. Coast Guard he would dog-sit for Healy when he was away.

Waugh and wife, Trish O’Donnell Jenkins, now divide their time between Virginia and Sligo, where they lead small groups—only 4-8 people—on tours of Ireland’s breathtaking west coast, including Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo and Donegal, and occasionally points south.

You’re not going to miss the best parts of Yeats Country. You can’t go to Sligo without visiting Ben Bulben, after all, and Waugh can arrange for a day of hill walking with a friend “who just likes doing it.” But Waugh also has unexpected treats in store for you.

“We pride ourselves in going places the Irish Tourist Board doesn’t know about,” says Waugh, a Bronx native whose family came from Clare and Derry.

That includes the mysterious fairy glen near Knocknarea, the burial spot of Queen Maeve. Most people make the arduous climb to the top of the cairn for the panoramic views. They don’t go to the fairy glen, because nobody but the locals knows about it. “I’ve taken many people here and they all react the same way—they become stunned and quiet,” Waugh told me when we met recently for coffee in Chestnut Hill. “I’ve had people from all faiths tells me they felt close to God or to nature. Everyone who goes there has a spiritual experience.”

He’s also pressed his friend, folklorist and author Joe McGowan, into leading tours of holy wells that are often hidden away on farms. “We have to tiptoe over the walls,” laughs Waugh. One of his groups insisted on stopping to watch a group of men tug a bullock out of a mud pit. Afterwards, the farmer invited them in for tea.

You’ll go to the local ceilis (“Not something put on for tourists”) and enjoy evenings at Ellen’s Pub with Healy and other locals who tell stories, recite poems, and punctuate the night with laughter. “We went to see Dermot at his cottage one day and when we were leaving, I noticed that one of the group wasn’t there,” recalls Waugh. “Then I see her in Dermot’s car and they’re driving to Ellen’s!”

A friend has border collies so he can arrange a live demonstration of sheepherding. And for a group he took at Halloween, he even found a local haunted house. “This house was occupied by poltergeists,” he says. “The people who own it are Protestant, but they brought in the Jesuits to say Mass for three months in a row.”

In fact, says Waugh, since his groups are so small, he can customize the tours to each individual. “What makes us work is the people,” he says. “No matter what you want to do, I can call up a friend who does it.”

Tour Dates for Wild West Irish Tours are April 19-29, May 3-13, May 17-27, June 7-17, July 5-15, July 26- August 4, August 16-26, September 2-12, September 19-29, October 4-14. The price, $1599 per person, doesn’t include airfare but covers the cost of mini-bus travel and accommodations at a family owned guest house with cottages on a scenic peninsula in West Sligo. For more information, call 571-236-9650 or email info@wildwestirishtours.com. Go to Waugh’s website  to read more about its “life-altering” vacations.

Expect to attend loads of sessions with Trad Tours.

You don’t have to worry about finding great music when you go to Ireland with Marianne MacDonald. The host of the WTMR 800 AM Irish radio program, “Come West Along the Road,” not only knows dozens of musicians in Ireland, she usually has a few on her Trad Tours trips. That’s come in handy more than once

“On my trip to Donegal last year, we were at a ceili at Ardara and the ceili band didn’t show up so the musicians on my tour played the ceili,” she recalls, laughing.

On one trip to Crane’s, a famous pub in Galway owned by Mick Crehan, whose sister was a friend of MacDonald’s, the famed fiddler and singer Desi O’Halloran sauntered in to meet the tour group and sang for them. He comes in whenever he hears they’re there. “I made friends with him the first time after I began playing his music on my show,” explains MacDonald. “My group just loved him. The last time we were there, on the last night of the tour, the group did a Desi O’Halloran soundalike contest. They came up with it on their own and we had a lot of fun.”

A few times her tour members have had the “locked in” experience: Once Irish pubs are officially closed, the doors are locked until the next morning and whoever the publican allows to remain is attending a “private party”—actually, a way around closing time laws—where the beer still flows and the music can go on till the sun rises.

The highlight of another of her tours involved the late Tommy Moffit, a popular and well known musician from Roscommon who lived in Philadelphia where he had a long-running radio show. The same one MacDonald does now. “We had a ceili at the White House in Roscommon and Tommy played. His whole family from Roscommon came to see him and he was thrilled to be playing in his hometown. He was pretty sick at the time and this may have been his last trip to Ireland. It was wonderful to be there for it.”

In case you haven’t figured it out, MacDonald’s tours aren’t for the tone deaf or anyone who hates Irish traditional music. When she launched her first trip a few years ago, MacDonald knew exactly what she wanted to offer—music, music, and more music. “Because that’s my interest,” she says. “I have an Irish radio show and I was a dancer for years. I actually started them out as dance tours. I’ve maintained all these friendships in Ireland so I’m able to expose people to music they might not have an opportunity to hear otherwise.”

She’s led tours to all parts of Ireland, Cape Breton in Canada, as well as Boston and Nashville.

“As an Irish trad musician, having traveled on my own to Ireland several times, I can say that Marianne arranges visits to the best venues for hearing Irish trad music and experiencing the culture, the craic, and the dancing,” says local fiddler Mary Malone, who has gone on several of MacDonald’s tours including one the radio host arranged just for her family, who wanted to experience Bloomsday in Dublin. “Everyone still talks about it,” says Malone.

MacDonald’s 2012 journey (October 4-11) will take you from Philadelphia to the Beamish Cork Folk Festival in Cork City where some of Irish music’s leading lights are on the bill, including Lunasa, Cherish the Ladies, Kilfenora Ceili Band, Paddy Keenan, John Doyle, Karan Casey, Mundy, and Julie Felix. While in Cork, you’ll stay at The River Lee Hotel, a luxury, 4-star hotel within walking distance of the festival venues. In addition to the headliners, there will be some special musical guests playing just for the tour, including Noel Shine and Mary Greene and their daughter, Ellie, as well as Rory McCarthy whose music she plays on her show regularly. The tour, which costs $2,199 plus $195 tax, including airfare, will also explore the largely hidden gem of the Beara Peninsula. “It’s where my family came from and it’s beautiful,” says MacDonald.

You’ll spend some time in Dublin at the prestigious Burlington Hotel, accessible to Stephen’s Green, Trinity, and the pubs, shopping and session scene of Ireland’s capitol city. A side trip to Avoca (setting for the series, “Ballykissangel” and home of the Avoca Weavers), the magnificent gardens of Powerscourt, and County Wicklow, known as Ireland’s garden spot.

For more information, contact Marianne MacDonald at 856-236-2717, or rinceseit@msn.com. See her website for details.