Ireland Travel

Pack layers for clothing. Only once in many trips to Ireland during June have I ever encountered temps warm enough to walk around in a short sleeved shirt and capri pants - it was 80 degrees outside and it lasted for exactly one day - hardly a heat wave compared to what you might be used to in early June in Texas. A sweater or a hoodie/fleece, a few long sleeve shirts, a few short sleeve shirts and jeans or pants are fine. Expect rain - a raincoat is plenty, special rain pants are really overkill unless you plan on going on some serious off-road hikes. Weather can turn on a dime in Ireland and start off bright, sunny and warm, then turn to rain (typically light, rarely a steady all-day downpour of torrential rains), and then go back to being rain-free but overcast and cold/windy. As for the footwear, if you aren't hiking off-road, you can generally make due with spray treating a pair of closed toe shoes with decent treads you might already have in your closet and bring a 2nd pair of shoes as back-up to let the first pair dry out overnight if it is exceptionally rainy one day. Skip the sandals.

We were there in May last year and the cliche is completely true - expect to dress in layers. Maybe we were lucky but it threatened to rain more than it actually did we did experience blazing sunshine to hail inside 10 minutes and back to partial sunshine in another 20 minutes on one day. Don't count on a heavy jacket or rain coat but expect to need to have a rain layer than fits over your second warmth layer that fits over your light warmth later so you can adjust getting into and out of buildings and transport as the weather changes. If you get cold easily and you're from Texas you might plan to dress a little more warmly than most people. My wife gets cold easily and seemed to be always cold or at least used that as an excuse to buy a wool sweater to compliment her other warm clothes. I think the constant humidity seems to multiply both the cold and warm temperatures swings so it seems colder than the temperature number may suggest. Have a great trip!
=Tod

Hello. My husband and I were on a Tauck tour of Ireland, last June. We were gone for 16 nights. It rained almost CONSTANTLY for the whole time. When it didn't rain, it was for only about five minutes - total. The trip was fantastic. Ireland is way beyond WONDERFUL.. It was very cold the entire time also. Some of our 26 tour people wore gloves and warm scarves. I wished I had brought along gloves. We all wore dark blue jeans or black pants. It rained so hard, that we couldn't keep our umbrellas up either. It was rainy and very windy at the same time. In Belfast, the streets were absolutely loaded with broken umbrellas. Mine broke and I had to buy a new one. We were told that is common in Belfast.