Cultural connection and lasting community through shared, real-world travel.
Thirty travelers, ages 21 to 30, fly together from Boston, New York, or Chicago. For ten days you cross Ireland with a local guide, taking in the history, landscape, music, and time with Irish people your own age. You pay a $500 application fee. Flights, lodging, and the full ten days are covered by sponsors and partners.
Ten days in Ireland. Here's how it works.
It all starts in Dublin
Two days to land, meet the group, and get your bearings. Trinity College, the old city, a first proper night of live music.
Then, the island
The heart of the trip: a week moving through places you've heard about your whole life. Newgrange, a tomb older than the pyramids. The Aran Islands by ferry. The Cliffs of Moher. Music in small-town pubs where nobody's performing for tourists.
Midway, a few young Irish adults join the group for several days: same bus, same meals, same weather. (We call it the Comhthúras, Irish for “companion on a journey.”) It's consistently the thing travelers talk about most afterward, and most go home with Irish friends.
It ends back in Dublin
On most routes, the last full day passes through Cobh, the port where 2.5 million people boarded ships to leave Ireland between the Famine and the middle of the last century. For many travelers, that's family history: the same crossing, made in the other direction. Then Dublin, and the flight home.
Three ways through
Where you go
Three routes are designed. Every one starts and ends in Dublin, reaches the Aran Islands, and keeps the same balance of history, landscape, and music. The pilot will run one of these routes.
The Heritage Trail
History, in the ground and in the stone.
- Dublin, with Trinity College and the old city
- Brú na Bóinne, a passage tomb older than the pyramids at Giza, and the Hill of Tara
- Galway city, then the Aran Islands by ferry
- The Cliffs of Moher and the Burren
- Dingle, Killarney, and Cobh
The broadest loop of the three, and the deepest cut through Ireland's history in one trip.
The North & West
The whole island, and what it's made of.
- Dublin, then Belfast: Titanic Belfast and the peace walls, with a driver who lived what he describes
- The Causeway Coast, from the Giant's Causeway to Carrick-a-Rede
- Donegal's Slieve League, among the highest sea cliffs in Europe
- Galway, then the Aran Islands by ferry
- Clare and the Cliffs of Moher
The only route that crosses into the North. A heritage trip that quietly doubles as a peace and reconciliation one.
The Wild Atlantic
Ireland, at walking pace.
- Wicklow's Glendalough, on foot
- Connemara and the Twelve Bens
- The Aran Islands, by bike
- The Burren and the Cliffs of Moher, on foot
- Dingle by bike, a night on the Kerry coast, and one cold Atlantic morning in a wetsuit
The active route. Less time on the coach, more time in the landscape itself.
The details at a glance
- Who
- Young Americans, ages 21 to 30, with Irish roots or a strong pull toward Ireland.
- When
- Summer departures, May through August. Exact dates are being finalized.
- The group
- 30 travelers, a OneThread trip director, and a local Irish guide.
- The cost
- A $500 application fee. Flights, lodging, and the full itinerary are covered.
- Departure cities
- Boston, New York, or Chicago.
- Heritage
- If one of your grandparents was born in Ireland, you likely qualify for Irish citizenship. Plenty of people find that out on this trip.
The pilot is taking shape.
The route, the season, and the partners on the ground are being finalized with people who know Ireland and its diaspora better than we do. If you want to be on the first trips, or help build them, this is the moment.