TREASURE IRELAND

IF YOU’RE PLANNING

a trip to Ireland this summer, it’s quite possible you will have uninterrupted sunshine. It’s more probable that you won’t.

An Irish website recently decided to name the 10 types of Irish rain: Spitting, Wetting, Rotten, Peeing, Stair- rods, Bucketing, Hooring, Pelting Down, Lashing and Hammering. Then they decided that when it comes to rain, Ireland goes up to 11. The 11th, and mildest, is also my favourite:

A Grand Soft Day.

A soft day is when the rain is no more than fine, cool, gentle mist on your skin. And everything does seem soft: buildings, beaches, trees, people, sounds. I’ve had many a gorgeous sunny day in my favourite Irish locations – Dalkey outside Dublin; Thomastown in the far south; Connemara in the west – but a trip to Ireland without a proper soft day is like going to an Irish pub and not ordering a certain black beverage.

In this issue, we asked Pól Ó Conghaile, one of Ireland’s best travel writers, to choose three themed journeys along its endless coastline. Fresh, clean air and fresh, clean food have always been attractions. You can add to those the worldwide phenomenon known as Game of Thrones, much of which was filmed in Northern Ireland. While the TV saga’s final season finishes this month, its many millions of fans around the world will keep visiting for years to come – whatever the weather.

Not that places like the Giant’s Causeway (on our cover), or the 5,000-year- old Neolithic tomb at Newgrange need a miniseries to promote them: they are already epic and otherworldly enough.