From the great estates of Wicklow to the wild Atlantic heart of Connemara and the Aran Islands — with ARNE & CARLOS
22 May – 1 June 2027 · 10 nights / 11 days
Second departure: 3 – 13 June 2027 · 10 nights / 11 days
This trip begins and ends in Dublin. Maximum 22 guests.
There is a moment, somewhere on the road west of Dublin, when Ireland reveals itself completely. The green deepens, the sky opens, and the Atlantic light — softer and more generous than anything on the other side of the Irish Sea — falls across a landscape so lush it seems almost invented. Hedgerows blur into hillsides the colour of moss and jade, stone walls disappear under ivy and fuchsia, and every field looks freshly rained on, even when it isn't.
The journey begins in Dublin, a city of Georgian streets and quiet elegance, before continuing south to County Wicklow — the Garden of Ireland — where great estates rise from the folds of the Wicklow Mountains. Here the colour arrives before anything else: clipped hedges dark as bottle glass, borders thick with foxglove and hydrangea, gravel paths pale against acres of green. At Powerscourt, Daniel Robertson directed the creation of one of the great gardens of Europe from a wheelbarrow, fortified by sherry; nearby, at Killruddery and Mount Usher, formal terraces, old trees and richly planted gardens open onto a landscape that has inspired generations of gardeners.
From Wicklow the road turns west, crossing Ireland via Birr Castle Demesne, where the Parsons family built the largest telescope in the world and Mary Parsons — a pioneer of photography — kept five hundred men employed through the Famine. Beyond it lies Connemara: wilder, greener, shaped by bog and mountain and the wind off the Atlantic. The land itself turns the colour of rust and heather, and the wool spun from these hillsides carries the same muted golds and greys, as if the landscape had simply been carded and knit. The Aran Islands carry a tradition of pattern and stitch that has crossed oceans and made this one of the most important places in the knitting world, and the sheep that graze these hillsides are the same sheep whose wool has kept people warm here for centuries.
Further south and east, the journey returns through the midlands to Kilkenny, where Cushendale Woollen Mills — the oldest working mill in Ireland — still spins fleece into fabric exactly as it did six generations ago, and where the Manor House at Mount Juliet, with its fires lit and its parkland rolling down to the River Nore, offers a fitting, quiet close to the journey.
From the formal gardens of Wicklow to the wild textile heartland of Connemara and the working mills of Kilkenny, this is Ireland in its most complete form — a journey from cultivated landscape to wild landscape, and from garden-making to wool-making.
Green fields run into Atlantic mist, borders blaze with colour under a pale northern sun, and at the end of the day comes the soft click of needles beside a turf fire.
Highlights:
- Explore Powerscourt Gardens, one of the great formal gardens of Europe, voted third best in the world by National Geographic.
- Wander through Killruddery and Mount Usher, two of the finest gardens in Wicklow, the Garden of Ireland.
- Cross Ireland via Birr Castle Demesne, home to the Parsons family and the largest telescope in the world for over seventy years.
- Wake to Atlantic mornings at Renvyle House, a historic retreat on the Wild Atlantic Way with deep connections to W.B. Yeats, Oliver St John Gogarty and James Joyce.
- Step into the wool traditions of the Aran Islands, with a workshop on Inis Oírr, and a visit to Cushendale, Ireland's oldest working mill.
- Visit Kylemore Abbey's Victorian Walled Garden, then drive the wild, dramatic road along the Connemara coast.
- Travel and knit in the warm company of ARNE & CARLOS, sharing inspiration, stories, and quiet moments of joy along the way.
