Hi, nice to meet you! I’m Imke, an Dutch Digital Media intern at An Óige, the Irish Youth Hostel Association. I won’t bore you with all the stuff I have to do, or how I ended up here. I’ll just tell you about the awesome trips I’m making here in Ireland, and especially the one that’s starting on the 12th of March.
I started my internship only a month ago, and 2 weeks later I was already on the road to visit the first hostel. I went to
Knockree Hostel in the middle of the Wicklow Mountains. The weather was horrible, but the location of the hostel is fantastic. It doesn’t matter what direction you’ll wander off, it will always give you amazing views, tiny paths and magical forests. Knockree Hostel is situated along the famous Wicklow Way, which I followed for about 18 kilometres towards
Glendalough Hostel. In
this blog you can read all about my experience.
An Óige has many hostels across Ireland but next month will be the first time an An Óige staff member will visit 9 of them in a row. Those 9 hostels are situated along the Wild Atlantic Way, a 2500 km long coast trail. My girlfriend and I will travel for 10 days on an epic road trip adventure to visit all of them and to see as many beautiful spots of Ireland as possible.
Our adventure will start on the 12th of March, we’ll drive from Dublin to Cork. We will spend the night there and the next day we will head a bit further to the west coast, towards
Black Valley Hostel. There we can actually start driving on the Wild Atlantic Way, direction
Rowan Tree Hostel in Ennis. We have a lot of time for activities there like kayaking, surfing, hiking or mountain biking as we have the next hostel quite nearby. The
Burren Hostel is not too far from Galway and we will spend Saint Patricks there definitely! On our route we’ll pass some of the main attractions of the Wild Atlantic Way like the Cliffs of Moher and Loop Head. The
Connemara Hostel is the next one on the list, situated in the heart of Connemare, overlooking Killary (Irelands only Fjord). The next day is going to be a lot time inside the car, because we will drive all the way to the north, to
Blue Stack Centre Hostel. The last stop on our road trip will be
Errigal Hostel, and after that we will drive back to Dublin.
We will create lots of content for An Óige as we go, our stories, videos and findings will be published in An Óige’s monthly newsletter and on the
blog. Everywhere we’ll be, we are on a lookout for great activities on a budget. A lot of the hostels we will be visiting are surrounded by stunning views, lakes or mountains so there is one activity you can always do, and for free: hiking!!
Keep in touch by liking us on
Facebook or subscribing on the
newsletter! I will share our story there, and will make you jealous by the pictures I’ll post!
