Find Your Kind of Summer

What are you doing this summer? Not the vague plan. The real one. The trip you have been meaning to book since January.

A week on the Waterford coast where the kids cycle the Greenway and you finally read your book. A slow drive through Kerry with the windows down and nowhere to be until tomorrow. A trip to the zoo that turns into lunch in town, a detour to the playground, and the kids asleep before you get home.

Ireland in summer is a different country. Light stays until ten. Roads empty out once you leave the motorway. You can be on a beach in Kerry, walking a forest trail in Laois, or sitting in a harbour town in Wexford, all within a few hours of each other.

Great National Hotels sit across twelve counties and three touring routes. Wherever you want to be, there is somewhere good to come back to at the end of the day.

The best days in Ireland are rarely the ones you plan to the minute. They are the ones where someone spots a sign for a castle, or you pull over because the beach is too good to drive past.

Here is how it usually goes. You wake up with nothing booked. Someone suggests the coast. An hour later you are on a beach you have never heard of, wondering why you do not do this more often. By evening you are in a harbour town, sitting outside a pub, watching the light hang on past nine.

That is a Tuesday in July. And you have not even looked at what is near the hotel yet.

Stay at Temple Gate in Ennis and the Cliffs of Moher are less than an hour away. Walk out of the Riverside Park and Enniscorthy Castle is five minutes down the road. Gold Coast Resort in Dungarvan puts you right on the Waterford Greenway. And from Ballyroe Lodge, the Dingle Peninsula opens up in front of you.

Ask at reception. They know what is worth your time.