First-time visitors to Ireland: ‘Some people have saved up all their lives to come here’ (2024)

I am in Kate Kearney’s Cottage near Killarney, a place I have never been. There are two young women jumping over a brush, and talented men playing traditional music, and the place is jammed with tables of people having dinner. We are watching a show, an evening of traditional music and dancing, in a beautiful, scenic location. Outside, there are a number of tour buses, including one that was not meant to turn up until the next day, causing, I’m later told, commotion behind the scenes.

Marlene Sullivan, the guide for the eight-day ‘Irish Gold: CIÉ coach tour’ that I am following for a day and a night, has been working as a guide for “20 and a bit years”. She emphasises the “a bit”.

During the time I spend with the CIÉ group, Sullivan proves herself to be the kind of effortless, charming, knowledgeable guide you’d dream about having to show you around a country new to you. You can have read as many history books as possible but nothing compensates for warmth and humour, and Sullivan has all these qualities in abundance.

There are 42 people on this tour, some of whom joined from a trip around Scotland. The tour started in Dublin, and places visited include Galway, Connemara, the Cliffs of Moher, Killarney, Blarney Castle, Waterford and Kilkenny. This is day four. CIÉ Tours offer a number of different tours, and carried 31,000 visitors to Ireland in 2023.

All but four of the 42 on this tour are American, and it is their first time to Ireland for everyone to whom I speak. There are a couple of large family groups and several people in their 20s and 30s, including Beth Boehlefeld (24) and Tyler Andre (31), who got engaged at the Cliffs of Moher in Co Clare earlier in the day.

“I ran the risk that she’d say yes,” says Andre, who brought a diamond ring with him. He planned to propose at the Cliffs because he thought it was the most scenic location on the tour. The other 13 members of his extended family and friends group knew he was going to propose, and captured it all on camera, so it really is just as well Boehlefeld said yes.

At Kate Kearney’s Cottage I lose count of the number of times people on the CIÉ tour tell me how delighted they are to be in a bar with local people. It is true the musicians and dancers are local but the evening is a show – and an excellent one – with dinner, specifically for tourists wishing to see and hear some kind of Irish entertainment. I’m not sure if this is clear to the visitors.

But then again, what counts as an “authentic experience” or not these days? When you have limited time, a programmed show gives you a flavour of a deeper cultural experience. Besides, it is clear everyone present is having a fantastic time and nobody except me is philosophising about authenticity, which is a subject as deep as a well.

The following morning we assemble for jaunting-car rides to Ross Castle, through Killarney’s gorgeous National Park. Donald Rice from Arizona is chatting with his friend Jeff Seagel in the hotel lobby about some of the things they have absorbed so far about Ireland and its history.

“All Irish history seems to have developed based on conflict,” Seagel says.

“It’s hard to retain all the information,” Rice says. Then he mentions the name Cromwell.

“What do you know about Cromwell?” I ask.

“He was one of the good guys, right?’ Rice says.

Seagel shakes his head. “No, he was one of the bad guys.”

Michael Joy is the name of our jarvey driver, and his horse is Murphy. “Where there’s joy, there’s no sorrow,” he jokes, as we trot away from the Great Southern Killarney hotel. Joy, who has worked as a jarvey for more than 40 years, and whose late father Brendan was also a jarvey, explains that he and Murphy are still getting to know each other, which is why he is letting other jaunting cars go ahead of us.

He asks where everyone is from and when he hears Pennsylvania among the names tells us that Murphy’s beautiful harness and plaited reins were all made by Amish harness companies in Pennsylvania, where there are four of them.

“These reins are 15 years old,” he says. “Most of the jarveys use harness made by the Amish.”

The trees are in their emerald summer beauty, the lake water glitters, and Ross Castle looms on the horizon. I could happily ride in this jaunting cart very frequently. Joy throws various jokes out to us like well-aimed feed to birds: this is not the first time he’s telling them.

We see some lambs gambolling rustically in a field. “I have two lambs at home myself.”

My fellow jaunters collectively go “Aww.”

“In the freezer,” Joy says. “Did you know why politicians are like bananas?”

There is an intake of breath at the word “politician”. (“I steer away from politics,” Sullivan told me earlier.)

“Why are politicians like bananas?” I ask, since nobody else has.

“They are never straight, they are green at the start, then they turn yellow and rot.”

To be honest, the lamb joke went down better.

After a wander around Ross Castle everyone gets back on the bus again and we head towards Kenmare. CIÉ Tours used to circle the Iveragh Peninsula, more commonly known as the Ring of Kerry, but stopped offering this, Sullivan explains, because in feedback questionnaires people said it made the day too long. So now they go to Kenmare and back via the Gap of Dunloe instead, and have more free time in Killarney.

There is a stop en route at Moriarty’s lovely family-run gift shop. Originally set up by Margaret and Michael Moriarty, their son Denis now runs the business, which features Irish craft and high-end woollen knitwear, using Irish wool, including some hand-knit pieces; now becoming much more difficult to source.

Katie Moorman (31) is travelling with her mother, Sally Moorman (67), from Cleveland, Ohio. She buys a gold and silver Claddagh ring as a souvenir of their trip. “The lakes and the mountains are so beautiful,” Katie says. “I loved Kate Kearney’s Cottage and the fact we could see the dancing so close up.”

“Being on a tour means you don’t have to think about what to do,” Sally says. She has noticed some cultural differences between the US and Ireland.

“What are they?” I ask.

“It’s strange that there are no wash cloths in the bathrooms. And that there is no top sheet under the duvet.”

I assure her that the duvet covers would be laundered after each guest. But that’s not the issue: she explains that sometimes it gets too hot, and in the US she would throw off the duvet and sleep under just the sheet. This is not something I have ever paid any attention to.

“Maybe it’s because there are not that many nights in Ireland it gets hot,” I say.

Before we get to Kenmare, Sullivan tells everyone about the stone circle there at the edge of the town, and where to find the path to it. There’s an audible buzz of excitement in the bus about the prospect of seeing a megalithic monument.

Later, Sullivan says to me: “Some people have saved up all their lives to come and see Ireland, because they have always wanted to see the country, or to see where their ancestors came from. I always wish I could do more; tell them more. I try to put myself in their shoes: what would I want to know more about?”

In the afternoon, on the bus back from Kenmare, I go over to talk to Bruce Kibby from West Virginia. He has headphones on as we are driving through the rainy and gothically beautiful landscape with its fields and rocks and mountain views. He takes off his headphones to chat to me. I ask what he was listening to.

“Dreams, by Dolores O’Riordan,” he says. “I first came across her about 25 years ago. I love this song. I reserved this song to listen to it in Ireland for the first time when we were on this road, going through the Gap of Dunloe because I knew it would be a beautiful place.” Kibby’s expression is one of pure joy. He tells me he has been listening to Dreams on repeat for the last half hour or so.

I leave Kibby alone and go back to my seat so he can continue uninterrupted to have this special experience he has planned for so long. No more questions.

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