GO IRELAND:Pack the sandwiches and lemonade.
LORRAINE COURTNEYlists her favourite secret spots for that quintessential summer activity, a family picnic
Urban escape
While Dublin’s fair city has many famous treats, pleasures and tourist traps that are more hype than substance, it also has the odd secret garden to picnic in. St Kevin’s Park on Camden Row used to be the graveyard to the ivy-strangled church at its centre. Nowadays, it’s a charming little park that is almost always empty.
Some say that the park is haunted by the agitated souls of those folks whose gravestones have been moved to the edge of the now manicured lawns, but it’s hard to imagine that any of this gang are the chain-rattling sort if you read the holier-than-thou life stories told in the memorials and plaques that dot the grounds.
In fact, this is an oasis of bucolic bliss in the city, an impression that’s heightened by its proximity to bustling Camden Street. Summertime brings buzzing bees and the twitter of birdsong, and it’s definitely one of the most calming places in Dublin to sit on a bench imbibing the serenity.
The picnic: Avoca's (avoca.ie) flagship Suffolk Street shop serves delicious food-to-go like potato cakes, soups, pies and salads as well as gourmet Irish deli produce and jars of Avoca loveliness in the form of country relish and hedgerow jam.
Aqua delights
Cork’s got its very own natural aquarium in Lough Hyne, Europe’s only inland sea lake and a geographical freak that positively teems with luminous jelly fish, sea squirts and assorted saltwater exotica. The scenery there is glorious, with fuzzy ancient woodlands, profusions of wildflowers and butterflies fluttering everywhere.
Turn left 4km west of Skibbereen on the Baltimore road. Park at the small lay-by and follow the twisting pathway up through Knockomagh’s oak- and beech-swathed slopes. The hike takes a solid half hour, but the views are only stupendous over the cerulean waters. You’ll also spot Castle Island, in the middle of the lake, still holding the ruins of Labhraí Loingseach’s castle, the king with the donkey’s ears who had his barbers killed lest they tell anyone.
The picnic: Manning's Emporium (027-50456) just outside Bantry is a kind of food mecca. Under the striped awnings are crammed fruit and vegetable baskets, row after higgledy-piggledy row of jars, local cheeses, breads from Kenmare's Breadcrumb bakery and offerings from unusual wineries.
Deserted beach
The holy grail of travelling is the beach that hasn’t been ruined by hordes of tourists. Up on Donegal’s Inishowen Peninsula lies the secret Kinnagoe Bay. You drive past whitewashed fishing villages, wild headlands and clifftop ocean lookouts before reaching this Kodak-ready crescent-shaped strand with vast expanse of white sand petering out into perfect blue sea. The track down is a brake-searing ride but the powdery sands are worth the nail-biting.
The pleasures here are simple ones: searching for sea shells, building sandcastles, dodging diving seagulls, burying Dad in the sand. For history buffs, there's the wreck of La Trinidad Valencera, just one of the many ships of the Spanish Armada that foundered on the Irish coast in 1588. There's a raw beauty here, with great hulks of rock which have been battered into sculpture-like shapes including a soaring ring of stone.
Take Route 238 north from Derry to Moville and then onto Leckemy, turn right to Kinnagoe Bay.
The picnic: Ryan's Artisan Foods (ryansartisanfoods.ie) in Donegal town uses Breton baker, Franck Pasquier, to produce its croissants, sourdoughs, spelt, traditional French loafs and speciality breads with smoked bacon, blue cheese, black olives and sundried tomatoes. You can also fill up on Irish farmhouse cheeses and various condiments.
Garden party
The turreted Duckett’s Grove might have been plucked from an Arthurian legend and transplanted onto the verdant Carlow countryside. The Gothic Revival castle dates from 1830 and it has had a very lively history. It was utilised as a training camp by the IRA in the 1920s, later it was owned by a local farmers’ co-operative and later still was taken over by the Land Commission.
Carlow County Council has now taken it on and while only haunting ruins remain, it’s still worth the trip, if only for the pleasure grounds and exquisitely restored walled gardens with lawns and box-edge beds. The flowers in the upper garden are a seductive mix of blushing old-fashioned roses, drifts of purple sage as well as exotic crocosmias. The lower garden is more traditional plant life and is crowned by Irish apple trees.
The pleasure grounds are partly encircled by a fence of vertical stones and they evoke a Georgian idyll – a perfect place to spread your blanket.
The picnic: Hennessy's Fine Food Store (059-9132849) is a gourmet grocery shop in Carlow that sells local cheeses, red onion marmalade, chilli jams, red pepper pesto and so on, as well as a mottled sandwich menu.
Literary lunch
Seven woods whispering by a lakeshore, with the Burren Hills and Slievecarran to the west, provide the perfect walled garden to picnic in. Even without the literary associations, and the Big House that was demolished in 1941, Coole Park is a magical place. Lady Gregory’s Autograph Tree, an enormous copper beech, has preserved the carved initials of about a dozen Irish literary greats. The glorious lake provides the perfect centrepiece, haunted by the wild duck and swans that have frequented the place for centuries.
Make a post-prandial pilgrimage to Thoor Ballylee, a 14th century Norman fortification, set among leafy trees and a gurgling river. WB Yeats bought the place for £35 in 1917 and spent more than a decade there writing some of the finest poetry in the English language.
The picnic: Sheridan's cheese shop (sheridanscheese mongers.com), right by Galway's St Nicholas' church, is good for stately stiltons and goats' cheeses from Clare. On nearby Abbeygate Street there is the Gourmet Tart Company (gourmettart company.com), a boutique bakery with mounds of meringue a permanent fixture in the window.
Holy mountain
"The most beautiful view I ever saw in the world", wrote William Makepeace Thackeray in 1842 of Clew Bay. It was his first visit to this beguiling sweep of water speckled with 365 oddly-shaped islands amid the bleak mountains and boglands of Co Mayo. In the 150 years since Thackeray – who was usually more prone to satire than hyperbole – published his sharply observant travel narrative The Irish Sketchbook, little has changed along the shores of Clew Bay.
Nearby Croagh Patrick is Ireland’s holy mountain and has a particular hold in the Irish imagination. It is a majestic 760m peak standing like the cathedral it has become above Clew Bay.
Ever since the earliest times, when pagans gathered to worship on its summit, the mountain has held a special place in the imagination and spiritual world of Irish people, an Irish Ganges or Mecca to which thousands flock every year to perform rites of penance and prayer. The summit provides a lofty perch for your picnic.
The picnic: The Food Store on Ballyhaunis Road in Claremorris (094-9362091) has an astonishing range of produce, including dishes of tantalising salads, ready-cooked foods such as Niall Heffernan's award-winning beef stroganoff, quiches, stuffed vol-au-vents and lots of crusty homemade breads.
Island life
George Bernard Shaw described Skellig Michael’s atmosphere as “the magic that takes you out, far out, of this time and this world”. The island looms sheer from the Atlantic, a triangular slaty mound. It is dedicated to St Michael, protector against the powers of the dark side and patron of high places, who allegedly assisted St Patrick drive Ireland’s snakes over the 200m cliffs to perish in the ocean.
A solid flight of stairs leads to the monastery. Like limpets clinging to their ledge high above the sea, the grey dry-stone beehive huts are just as the monks built them 1,500 years ago. You crawl through the doors, can barely stand in the interior, and can see only with the help of torches.
On the island, there is little to mark any human presence except the headstones of the cramped burial grounds. Nothing grows but sea pinks and scurvy grass. Joe Roddy (skelligtrips.com) sails from Portmagee pier daily and offers tours of Little and Great Skellig, with two and a half hours to explore the monastery and have a picnic.
The picnic: Jack's Bakery and Deli (jacks-bakery.com) in Killorglin is the perfect place to pack your hamper. You'll find warm scones and a selection of breads that range from red onion with garlic to white soda, as well as farmhouse cheeses and handmade charcuterie.