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Dingle/Cliffs of Moher/Shannon/Galway - possible in one day?

Posted by (Pittsburgh, PA, United States) on

One day of our upcoming trip to Ireland includes a second night in Dingle, driving our rental car to the Cliffs of Moher, doubling back to drop the car off at the Shannon airport and finally taking a bus to Galway.
Alternately we can just drive to Shannon from Dingle, return the car and then head to Galway.

Is the first plan too ambitious? It is possible time-wise if we leave Dingle in good time, spend about 2 hours at the Cliffs of Moher and then take an early evening bus to Galway. We do not need to do any site seeing in Galway that day. We won't be able to fit in the Cliffs of Moher at any other point in our visit.

We are leaving both options open so we can judge weather, our mood etc. but thought I would get some input from people who may have some experience on this route.

Posted by
398 posts

I think it is doable. If you left Dingle by 8:30, I think you'd make it to the Cliffs by noon. If you spend 2 hours there as you suggested, you could be on the road by 2:00, and the Shannon Airport is 1 or 1.5 hours away from the Cliffs. Any reason why you can't just continue on to Galway from the Cliffs and drop your rental off there?

My experience with a similar day is the following: we left Dingle in the morning just after breakfast, drove to the Cliffs (we took the Tarbert-Killimer ferry instead of going through Limerick), spent a fair amount of time and had a quick sandwich at the small cafe there, then took a roundabout way to Galway through the Burren, with a few stops along the way. We were in Galway in time for dinner.

So your plan is doable, I think, but if possible, I'd drop the car off in Galway instead of going out of your way to Shannon.

Posted by
1172 posts

We left Dingle at 9 am, stopped at Bunratty Castle and Folk Park for 2 hours, went on to the Cliffs of mother for a couple of hours and then drove on to Galway. We pulled into to Galway sound 7:30. It was a long but a great day.

Posted by
5 posts

Thank you for the helpful replies. My first plan had us driving the car to Galway but Hertz does not have a drop off point there so we are stuck with Shannon and the bus back to Galway.

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