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Road trips to remember: IMAGE staffers share their most memorable road trips
Team IMAGE map out their perfect routes behind the wheel, from favourite family picnic spots to trips to the Wild Atlantic Way.
Sarah Finnan, Deputy Digital Editor, IMAGE.ie
Every couple of years, my dad’s side of the family gets together for a few days away. There are usually more than 20 of us (there are seven of us in my family alone), so we book a couple of adjacent Airbnbs, pack the cars up with supplies and hit the road. Two years ago we went to Achill and it’s still one of my favourite holidays to date. My dad made a flat-pack picnic table that fit in the boot of the car so when we were about halfway there, we pulled into the carpark at Turlough Park in Mayo for lunch. My dad is the handy one but my mam is the planner and she doesn’t do things by halves, so we had everything from flasks of tea to scones and sausage sandwiches. Naturally, it was lashing rain (summer in Ireland, eh?!) so we all huddled under the one tree to stay dry… it wasn’t funny at the time but I can only imagine how ridiculous we all looked!
The rest of the holiday was chaos but it reminded me of when I was young and we would all congregate in the tiny living room of my grandparent’s house. The kettle was always on the boil — we never had enough cups to go around so as soon as someone had finished their last sip, that mug was washed and reused — and there was a constant stream of people in and out to say hello. Evenings always involved sitting in the good room in front of the fire and listening to the record player. My grandad would be eating fried onions straight from the pan and offering everyone sips of poitín (he loved seeing them wince at the taste), while my granny would be fretting and trying to make more tea. They died when I was in secondary school so they’ve been gone a few years but I really notice their absence when we all meet up – it’s sort of bittersweet to spend time together as adults but it definitely makes me appreciate the time we have together more. No one does crazy like the Finnans!
Edaein O’Connell, Contributing Editor
One of my most favourite and memorable road trips took place in 2021 on this beautiful island of Ireland. Travelling from Kerry to Donegal, myself and four of my best friends took my little, unassuming but wholly powerful 1.0-litre car on a trip we would never forget.
We traversed the haunting beauty of the Wild Atlantic Way, visited parts of the country that were never on our ‘must see’ list and laughed like never before. One of our highlights on the tour was a small village called Loughanure which is located halfway between Gweedore and Dungloe. The village has only one restaurant called Casadh an TSúgain and after our arrival, we quickly made the short walk there to enjoy a big feed before heading to bed. The ‘feed’ we envisioned quickly turned into a night of song and music. We performed for the locals like we were Oasis at their Croke Park reunion next year. The audience was in the palm of our hand.
A hike of Mount Errigal was scheduled for 8am the next morning but reader, we didn’t get into bed until 4 am. As you can imagine, the hike was an unmitigated disaster. However, we would do it all over again. Not only did the northwest of Ireland provide craic and memories for a lifetime, but the views were spectacular and reminded me of how lucky we are to live in Éire.
Holly O’Neill, Digital Editor, IMAGE.ie
My family’s favourite thing to do on a good weather weekend is visit Kildare Farm Foods. From the second we get in the car, my three and six-year-old nieces start asking if we’re there yet and we have to distract them with a long game of what farm animals we’ll feed when we’re there and what our daily schedules would look like if we lived on a farm (the nieces will milk the cows every morning themselves, they promise) and what exactly we’ll buy in the shop (sausage rolls from my nieces, kebab meat for my brother in law, condiments for me, jams for my dad).
After pottering around the farm shop, hand feeding all the farm animals, cooing at the newest baby lamb or rabbit or Lady Mabel’s litter of piglets, a trip on the Adventure Railroad Train, a round of crazy golf, a journey to the pumpkin patch, a visit to the Tractor Cafe and a row over what treat to buy, everybody small is just about wiped enough to munge a cookie in satisfied silence in the car on the way home.
Dominique McMullan, Editorial Director, IMAGE
Just before I turned 21 I visited California with six of my best friends. One roasting hot Sunday morning we decided it would be a good idea to drive to Las Vegas. We rented a van from a place called “Rent-A-Wreck”– it had no air conditioning, very sticky seats and made a disturbing noise when it was in third gear. The six-and-a-half-hour drive was – no surprises here – a nightmare. It was the first time we had ever driven on US roads and the seven-lane highways were terrifying.
The closer we got to Vegas, the hotter it got (it was 48 Celsius when we got there) so we couldn’t open the van windows because the wind coming in the window was so hot that it burned. There were five of us on a back seat that should have held three and the sweat coming from our legs meant that with every turn, the girls sitting on top of the laps would slide across the backseat. We made it to Vegas eventually, and I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard in my life.
Megan Burns, Editor, IMAGE Interiors
The road trips in my life have been few and far between, but I always fondly remember a trip my boyfriend and I took from Derry down the west coast as far as Kerry. Being broke at the time, we stayed in some incredibly random Airbnbs and crept our way around tiny, winding roads in our borrowed car, but we saw so many breathtaking sights, some well-known and others just random vistas that made us pull over to get out and look.
It was the off-season, which meant that little was open, but also that we usually had these spectacular places all to ourselves – sometimes it felt like we could be the only people within 50 miles, not something you experience very often.
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