Without a map — An Irish Photo Adventure
April 21 – April 29, 2027
Open to photographers of all levels—professional or enthusiast—who want to explore Ireland slowly, photograph with intention, and experience the landscape, culture, and people along the way.
Travel with me through the backroads of Ireland on a photography-led journey that explores the heart of the country’s landscapes, culture, and people. This is the Ireland most visitors never find — and every day offers new visual stories shaped by land, light, and weather.
The West of Ireland is rich with photographic inspiration — dramatic coastline, quiet sandy coves, winding country roads, stone cottages, rolling farmland, intricate stone walls, historic castles, monastic ruins, holy wells, colorful villages, and rugged mountain landscapes.
Along the way you’ll meet fishermen, sheep farmers, artisans, musicians, and artists — people deeply connected to place and tradition, who have a way of making you feel like you are part of their story.
This journey is for those who want a trip to encompass all the things they love — travel, photography, friendship, conversation, fun, and laughter. For those who understand that the best Ireland isn’t in the guidebooks.
Ireland reveals itself to the people who slow down long enough to let it. This trip is built around that.
Ireland doesn't unfold on a schedule. it unfolds in conversation.
Some of the most extraordinary moments of every trip I’ve led have come from a five-minute exchange with a stranger. A question asked at the right moment. A stranger who had no reason to help — and did anyway. That’s just how Ireland works.
One afternoon at the seaweed baths in Connemara, I asked the receptionist if she knew anyone with Connemara ponies. Within minutes I was on the phone with a farmer I had never met. He invited us to photograph his horses in the field, showed us the beach where the cattle tumbled from the cliffs in The Field, and then — entirely of his own volition — drove forty-five minutes with us to Ashleagh Falls where his niece’s ponies ran loose along the river while salmon jumped upstream. All from a single conversation. Just Ireland being Ireland.
Another time, following the light in a quiet pub, I got talking with a woman who told me to come back Friday morning. I did — and found a man who came down from the hills every week for his shopping, three pints of Guinness in front of him, drinking from all three randomly, while his sister sat at the corner table with her tea and toast.
This is why I don’t hand you a printed schedule. The days are thoughtfully planned — but the best thing that happens is usually the thing nobody could have predicted. I plan for that too.
That’s the Ireland I’m taking you to. The one that can’t be scheduled.
Hi, I’m Clare.
Ireland has always been home to me. Although I grew up in Minnesota, I was raised in an Irish household where the accents were strong, the tea kettle was always on, and travel back to Ireland was part of life. I remember once when an Irish passport control officer said “welcome home” — it was like he had read my mind.
I’ve been traveling back and forth to Ireland for more than fifty years. I once owned a small group travel company specializing exclusively in Ireland, exploring nearly every country road and boreen in search of off-the-beaten-path experiences most visitors never find. That time shaped how I travel, photograph, and experience the country today.
This is where I feel most myself.
What I love most about Ireland is how every journey unfolds differently. A simple walk down a bog road might turn into a conversation with a local turf cutter, an impromptu portrait, or time spent watching a sheep farmer train his dog. These moments can’t be planned — but they become the memories that last.
Ireland reveals itself when you slow down and remain open to what appears. That’s what I’m bringing you. Not an itinerary. Not a highlights reel. The Ireland I know — the one that takes fifty years to discover.
This Experience Includes
8 nights single room accommodation — no single supplement.
The price reflects solo travel
9 days touring via private coach with Coleman Naughton, native of South Connemara and one of the finest guides in Ireland
Gratuities for our driver included
Opening afternoon tea at Markree Castle
Farewell dinner in Clifden
Breakfast daily
Photographic guidance throughout
Access to the real Ireland — the people, places, and moments most visitors never find
This Journey is for you If...
You’ve seen beautiful places. You know the difference between a trip that checks boxes and one that gets under your skin.
You’re the photographer who stops mid-sentence because the light just changed. Who walks around to find the right angle. When the day changes course unexpectedly, your first instinct is yes.
You’re not looking for a rigid itinerary or a printed schedule. You’re looking for something real — and a guide who knows where to find it.
You’re after the feeling underneath the image — the light on the bog, the story behind the ruin, the moment a place stops being scenery. You want the photograph and everything it carries.
Photography is at the heart of every day. Every stop, every detour, every unplanned moment. If that’s how you travel, you’ll fit right in.
Come with me as I show you my Ireland
The Journey
Dublin to Sligo — The Journey Begins
We meet in Dublin and head west together. Along the way we stop at the roadside studio of my cousin Eddie — an artist who has built a found object wall alongside the main road that is quirky and spectacular in equal measure. He’ll have tea and scones waiting. It’s the first sign that this trip runs on a different kind of logic than most.
From there we make our way to Markree Castle — a magnificent 17th century castle in County Sligo — for our opening afternoon tea together. The castle and its gardens are extraordinary to photograph. It’s a proper beginning.
Sligo — Yeats Country
The landscape here is mythological in the truest sense — Ben Bulben rising flat-topped above the fields, Gleniff Horseshoe curving into the hills, Mullaghmore Harbour with its stone pier and Atlantic swell. Yeats is buried here, quietly, in a churchyard that feels exactly right for a poet who wrote about wild swans and stolen hearts.
We’ll spend our days moving through this landscape with our cameras — beaches, holy wells, ancient abbeys, fairy trees, old pubs where the light falls just so in the middle of the afternoon. We’ll meet local artists, artisans, and photographers whose work is rooted in this place. We may find ourselves at Downpatrick Head watching the sea crash through a blowhole, or sitting on the beach at Bundoran waiting for the sunset. Sheep will appear. Lots and lots of sheep.
If we find ourselves near Enniscrone, we may take in the Edwardian seaweed baths — a ritual that has been drawing people back for over a century. Whether you bathe or simply wander the beach, it’s a place unlike any other.
The Journey South — Doo Lough Valley
The drive from Sligo to Clifden takes us through some of the most quietly devastating landscape in Ireland. The Doo Lough Valley carries the memory of the famine — hundreds walked this road and didn’t survive it — and the beauty and the weight of that history sit together here in a way that stays with you. We stop. We walk. We let the place speak.
Along the way there are castles, strongholds, and the remnants of lives lived hard and close to the land. Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s legendary pirate queen, left her mark on this coastline and we follow it.
Connemara — The Wild West
Connemara is where the light changes everything. Bog roads stretch toward mountains that shift from purple to amber to grey depending on the hour. The coastline is ragged and magnificent. Connemara ponies appear in fields and on beaches as if placed there specifically to be photographed.
We’ll find graveyards with views that stop your breath. Beaches where the sand is white and the water is impossibly blue even when the sky is grey. Gaeltacht villages where Irish is the first language and the culture runs deep. We may walk the grounds at Ballynahinch Castle along the river. We’ll find the artisans — the weavers, the potters, the people who have stayed because leaving was never an option.
Connemara has a way of getting under your skin. If you’re like me, you may never want to leave.
The Last Morning — Ross Errily Friary
On our final morning we leave Clifden and make our way back toward Dublin. We stop at Ross Errily Friary — one of the best preserved medieval friaries in Ireland, sitting quietly in a field off the tourist trail, open to the sky, with crows in the tower and centuries of silence in the stones.
From there, Dublin Airport and the journey home — carrying photographs, memories, and the particular feeling of having experienced something real.
Where We Stay
Sligo — The Glasshouse Hotel
In Sligo we stay at the Glasshouse Hotel, right in the city centre on the banks of the Garavogue River. It’s a clean, modern, well-located Irish hotel — and that’s exactly what we need here. Sligo town is worth exploring on your own terms: good restaurants, traditional pubs, bookshops, galleries, and the kind of streets that reward wandering. Being in the centre means your evenings are yours. Walk out the door and Sligo is right there.
Clifden — The Quay House
The Quay House is Clifden’s oldest building — built for the harbour master in 1820, later a Franciscan monastery, and now one of the most distinctive places to stay in all of Ireland. The owners, Paddy and Julia Foyle, have filled every room with antiques, original paintings, and objects collected over a lifetime. Their son Toby is there to welcome you and help with bags. No two rooms are alike. You might find yourself sleeping beneath a gilded four-poster in a room hung with portraits, or waking in a safari-inspired suite with views of the harbour. Every corner has something worth looking at.
Breakfast is served in a stunning conservatory overlooking the garden — generous, unhurried, and among the best I’ve had anywhere in Ireland.
The Quay House sits right on the quays, a ten-minute walk along the beach road and up the hill into Clifden town. There is no elevator — you’ll take the stairs to reach your room, and Toby is on hand to help with luggage. But what you get in return is something no hotel can offer: a place with genuine soul, owned by a family who love what they do, in a building that has been quietly at the centre of Clifden life for two centuries.
This isn’t a modern chain hotel. It’s something much better.
This itinerary is subject to change due to weather, local conditions, and serendipitous moments.
Then there’s Coleman.
Meet Coleman Naughton
I’ve traveled Ireland’s roads for decades and met many wonderful driver-guides along the way, but Coleman truly stands apart. He is kind, generous, endlessly funny, and a born storyteller—someone whose presence quietly shapes the rhythm of the journey. Raised in South Connemara and a native Irish speaker (he learned English from the telly), he knows these roads not by map, but by heart.
As we wind along the backroads, Coleman shares stories of growing up in rural Ireland—less a lesson from history books and more a first-hand telling of life as it was lived. He knows the locals, and they know him, often greeting one another as old friends. And if we’re lucky—and charming enough—he may take us to his granny’s old shed, pull out a slán, and lead us into the bog to try our hand at cutting turf. These are the moments that can’t be scheduled or staged—unexpected, deeply rooted in place, and the kind you’ll remember long after the journey ends.
9 days. The West of Ireland. Without a Map.
$5675
A non-refundable deposit of $850 is required to hold your space. Full payment is due 120 days prior to the trip. If you are signing up within 120 days of the trip, full payment will be required to register. See our payment and cancellation policies.
Not Included: Travel expenses to/from Ireland, passport and visa fees (if applicable), items of a personal nature, alcoholic beverages, travel insurance (including medical or trip cancellation), tips, and anything else specifically not listed as included.
Three years later, I returned to Ireland with Clare again — and that says everything. Her ability to create an experience that feels both effortless and deeply personal made me want to come back for more. Standing on the top of Sky Road in Connemara photographing the ponies at sunset — that moment alone was worth the trip. Clare doesn’t just guide you through Ireland; she helps you truly experience it. This has been one of my favorite trips ever.
Karen O’Shaughnessy
Not your typical photo tour. No stress as Clare provides a relaxed, supportive atmosphere with locations that supply beauty as well as interactions with locals. In this small group of creatives you have the opportunity to experiment and have fun. I learned so much about Ireland!
Susan Cooper Parker
Whenever I come back from one of Clare’s trips, the first thing I do is prepare for the next one. There is nothing like this — an experience that introduces you to the real, organic Ireland. I’ve been up close with local weavers, wood carvers, and tanners, photographed jockeys at the horse races, watched salmon swimming upstream, learned to slean peat, relaxed in a traditional hot seaweed bath, and went searching for fairies. As a senior, solo traveler, these trips are perfect — and each one is completely different.
Carol Biallas
The land, the people, the culture, the experience… everything was so beautiful and life-changing. I showed up solo and loved how quickly a group of strangers became something so much more. Each woman left me inspired in her own way, and I came away with endless memories I’ll cherish forever. It was so much more than a photography trip. I left feeling renewed: spiritually, mentally, and creatively. I could wander that land for the rest of my life if given the chance.
Jess Novotny
Frequently Asked Questions
When does the trip begin?
The trip begins the morning of Tuesday, April 21, 2027. Please plan to arrive in Dublin no later than Monday, April 20 — you will need to be at the Mespil Hotel in central Dublin the morning of the 21st ready to depart. If you’d like to stay there the night before, contact the hotel directly at reservations@leehotels.com and reference booking code CLAR190427 to receive the negotiated rate of €209 B&B (subject to availability; rooms are released April 1).
Where does the trip end?
We will be leaving Clifden the morning of April 29 and driving back to Dublin Airport. We are planning on stopping on the way at Ross Errily Friary so plan on arriving at the airport around 4:00 pm. Do not book a flight home before Thursday, April 30. Transatlantic flights from Dublin depart in the morning, and we will not arrive at Dublin Airport until late afternoon on April 29 — making it impossible to catch a same-day flight home. From there, you may rent a car, stay at an airport hotel, or continue into Dublin city center by taxi or Aircoach.
What airport should I fly into?
Dublin Airport (DUB).
What will the weather be like?
In Ireland, weather is part of the experience. There’s no true dry or rainy season — just beautifully changeable skies. You may experience rain, mist, sunshine, and dramatic clouds all in the same day. It’s this ever-shifting light that gives Ireland its mood, texture, and famously frequent rainbows. As the Irish say, if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.
How big will the group be?
We keep the group intentionally small — 8 to 12 travelers — to allow for flexibility, connection, and a more personal experience.
Is there a single occupancy charge?
No. The trip price is based on single-room accommodation, so you won’t need to share with anyone you don’t know.
What if I’m traveling with a friend or spouse and want to share a room?
That’s no problem. The double-occupancy rate is $5,075 per person, which will be reflected in your final invoice. You may request either one bed or twin beds. Please note this rate applies only to travelers who register together and choose to share a room.
Where will we be staying?
We stay four nights in Sligo at the Glasshouse Hotel, right in the city centre on the banks of the Garavogue River — perfectly located for evening meals, pubs, and exploring the town on your own. And four nights in Clifden at the Quay House, one of the most distinctive places to stay in all of Ireland. One of the things people love most about this trip is that we don’t move every day. Four nights in each location means you can settle in, get to know the town, and return each evening without having to repack and relocate. It makes for a more relaxed and immersive experience — which is exactly the point. Full descriptions of both properties are in the Where We Stay section above.
Will someone handle my luggage?
This is a small group experience, not a large tour — so luggage management is your own responsibility throughout the trip. Our driver will help load and unload the coach, and there is plenty of room on the bus for everything you need to bring, including camera equipment and gear. There is no porter service moving bags between rooms, so you should be comfortable managing your own luggage at each hotel.
How large is the bus?
We’ll be traveling in a 20-seat bus, giving everyone room to spread out comfortably and store luggage.
What about lunch?
On fine days, we stop at a local deli and take our lunch on the road — finding a spot along the Wild Atlantic Way to sit, eat, and take in wherever we happen to be. It sounds simple, and it is. It’s also often one of the best parts of the day. Our driver’s hours are limited, and stopping at a restaurant for lunch can easily eat up an hour or more of precious daylight and driving time. The deli stop keeps us moving, keeps everyone fed on their own terms, and means we can grab fruit and snacks that are hard to find on a restaurant menu. On wet days, when the light isn’t cooperating and the shoots are shorter, we’ll find somewhere warm to sit down properly. Ireland always obliges.
Can dietary restrictions be accommodated?
Yes. You’ll note dietary needs on your registration form and we’ll do our best to accommodate them, particularly for group meals. The deli lunch stops are actually ideal for those with specific dietary needs — you choose exactly what works for you.
What is the activity level required?
This journey is best suited for those who enjoy walking, exploring, and lingering in beautiful places. Expect leisurely walks of up to 2–3 miles throughout the day, often broken up with frequent stops to photograph, observe, and absorb the landscape. Some terrain may be uneven or gently challenging so you should be firm of foot. We take our time and honor the rhythm of the group. The emphasis is on presence and discovery — not speed or distance.
Will there be free time?
Yes. Most evenings are free for dinner, music, or wandering on your own. Depending on conditions, we’ll photograph either sunrise or sunset (not both in the same day). The itinerary balances shared experiences with personal time.
Will we be photographing all day, every day?
Not nonstop. While photography is central to the trip, there’s plenty of time built in to explore, rest, and observe. European laws determine the amount of time our driver can drive every day and we’ll be very cognizant of that when planning our days. There will be plenty of free time to explore the towns and areas on your own as well.
What should I pack for the trip?
We’ve put together a complete packing guide covering everything from waterproof shoes to camera gear to how to dress for Irish weather. The short answer: layers, waterproof shoes, and more memory cards than you think you’ll need. You can find the Packing Guide here →
Do I need travel insurance
Yes — travel insurance is strongly recommended for both medical coverage and trip interruption. Given the upfront costs of a trip like this, it’s worth having coverage in place before you travel. There are two good places to start. First, check with your credit card company — cards like American Express and Chase Sapphire often include meaningful travel protection, and you may already have more coverage than you realize. Read the fine print carefully so you know exactly what’s included and what isn’t. If you need to purchase a policy, a quick search for “best travel insurance companies” will turn up several comparison sites — Forbes, U.S. News, and NerdWallet all publish regularly updated roundups that make it easy to compare options side by side. Look for a policy that covers both trip interruption and medical expenses abroad.
What are the trip payment and cancellation policies?
In order to keep the group small we have to strictly adhere to all of our payment and cancellation policies. Please review these carefully before registering.
How are payments handled?
Payments are securely processed via PayPal using either your PayPal account or a credit card. This trip is produced by Cultural & Destination Specialist, Inc., d/b/a Taylor & O’Neill.
When is the final payment due?
Final payment is due 120 days before departure. A payment link will be sent about a week prior. Installment plans are available — please contact us if you’d like to arrange one.
What happens after I register?
Within 24 hours, you’ll receive a welcome email confirming your place on the trip along with key dates and next steps.
Do I need a travel visa?
As of 2025, U.S. citizens traveling through the UK or visiting Northern Ireland will need a UK ETA (Electronic Travel Authorization). Starting in late 2026, U.S. passport holders traveling through Schengen Area countries will need ETIAS authorization. Ireland is not part of the Schengen Area, so U.S. citizens traveling only to Ireland do not need a visa. However, if your flight connection routes through the UK or a European country, you will need the appropriate authorization for that country as well. If you do not hold a U.S. passport, please check visa requirements with your local Irish consulate or embassy.
Questions? Email clare@clareoneill.com — I’m happy to help.
This photography adventure of Ireland is a production of Cultural & Destination Specialists, Inc.
clare@clareoneill.com