Westport

A rare planned town in Ireland, laid out in the 1780s by James Wyatt around the Carrowbeg river with a tree-lined mall. It sits under Croagh Patrick, which tens of thousands climb on Reek Sunday, some of them barefoot.

• Ballintubber Abbey · Founded by a king of Connacht in 1216, Mass has been said here every week since — roofless for 250 years through Cromwell and the Penal Laws, never abandoned.
• Croagh Patrick — the forty days · Patrick fasted forty days on this summit and rang his bell at the black demon birds until they went, says the 9th-century Bethu Phátraic; a later telling adds a she-serpent driven into the lake below. The mountain was holy long before him — there is a Bronze Age enclosure up there, and dozens of hut sites around it.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.