Little Gem Private Tours & Ancestry Tours of Ireland

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Little Gem Private Tours & Ancestry Tours of Ireland

Private and customised, luxury tours of Ireland. We offer unique, private guided tours in Dublin City and Ireland.

Combining the best driver guides in Ireland with unique itineraries and a selection of boutique and luxury accommodations. We will take you to the main attractions of Ireland in luxury, comfortable transport offering a choice of activities along the way. You can choose from our menu of brilliant of activities to enhance your journey to the awesome sights of Ireland. Our activities include Irish ca

stle tours, boat trips, horse riding, city breaks, Irish shopping experiences, treks and much more. Whether your interested in the culture, adventure or social life of Ireland we can tailor a tour that suits you. Our goal is to provide more than a tour - A full Irish experience...

Check out our photos and videos on our Google+ page or go to our website to discover more... www.littlegemtours

04/09/2026

Do you know what wellington throwing is? 👀🥾

Grab a rubber wellie boot and throw it — sometimes for distance, sometimes for accuracy, like at this Bantry show. Trickier than it looks!

Our guests caught it live with our guide Dermot — pure Irish country show fun 🇮🇪💚

02/09/2026

Ever imagine tracing your roots back to Ireland? 🇮🇪

Deep in the Mourne Mountains, Co. Down, our guests met relatives from their own family line at the old family home. From there, a walk through the family graveyard, reading names that connected directly to the ones in their own family tree.

But the story didn't end there. The other half of the family led all the way across the country to Connemara, Co. Galway — to their grandfather's house, a completely different landscape, a completely different branch, but the same feeling of finally standing somewhere you'd only ever heard about.

Two counties. Two branches of the same tree. One family who came to Ireland looking for where they're from, and left having actually met it.

A special mention to our guide Bobby, who guided this family every step of the private tour. 💚

31/08/2026

You choose Little Gem for your trip to Ireland, and somewhere along the way you discover wonderful places, incredible people, and a trip that feels like a story, not a plan.💚

This week, that story was written by the road — with Tony, Dermot, Ruth, and Bobby out driving it, one day and one detour at a time.

A little look at the week, in photos. 📸

28/08/2026

"Is Ireland good for kids and multi-generational trips?" We get asked this almost every week — so here's what actually makes it work, beyond just "yes." 💚

Traveling with grandparents, parents, and young kids means everyone runs on a different clock — nap times, bathroom stops, someone wanting to linger while someone else is ready to move on. So the day gets built around that, not the other way around. One guide, one vehicle, no fixed departure times to answer to. If "twenty minutes at the tower" turns into forty because the kids found a graveyard full of Celtic crosses to explore, the rest of the day just shifts. 🍀

It also means we can mix things up more than a set itinerary would allow — a castle for Grandad's history fix, a farm or a stretch of beach for the kids to burn off energy, a short walk instead of a long one if legs are tired by 3pm. Some families want a falconry display or a boat trip thrown in; others just want more stops with space to run around. Either way, the day gets shaped around who's actually in the car, not a fixed list of sights.

It's just how the day actually runs when there's no one else in the van but your family.

26/08/2026

What does a mischievous fairy from Shakespeare have in common with a wild goat in County Kerry? 🐐🎭

Ireland has its own Puck too, and every August, a small Kerry town crowns him king. It's called Puck Fair, held every August in Killorglin, on the banks of the River Laune — and it's considered Ireland's oldest festival. A wild mountain goat is caught in the hills, brought down to town, crowned King Puck by a local schoolgirl, and placed on a high stand where he "reigns" over three days of markets, music and celebration. On the third day, he's released back into the mountains.

Why a goat? The story most people tell goes back to Cromwell's soldiers: a startled goat ran ahead of them into Killorglin, and its arrival warned the town in time to prepare. They've honoured his kind every August since.

As for the name — it really is the same word family as Shakespeare's fairy, a very old word for a shapeshifting spirit that shows up across English, Irish and Welsh folklore. Whether Killorglin's goat-king got his crown from that same spirit, or just from "poc," the plain Irish word for billy goat, is something even folklorists still argue about.

Which do you believe — the shapeshifting spirit, or just a goat with a very good story attached to his name?

24/08/2026

Heritage Week brought something special to Glenveagh Castle's walled garden — Dermot and our guests stopped to watch Patrick Sweeney at his lathe, turning a piece of storm-felled Irish timber into something new right in front of them. Patrick's spent over 30 years doing this: taking wood that's fallen or been damaged, often reclaimed rather than cut, and giving it a second life by hand. No two pieces are ever the same, he says — because no two trees are ever the same.

There's something fitting about watching that happen in Donegal, surrounded by the mountains and gardens of Glenveagh. For a lot of our guests, especially those who've been away from Ireland a long time, moments like this land differently — a piece of native wood, shaped patiently rather than mass-produced, carrying a bit of home in it.

Patrick Sweeney Woodcrafts

19/08/2026

What does it take to mark the grave of a saint?

Not gold. Not marble. Just a single word carved into granite: PATRIC.

Legend holds that Saint Patrick was buried here, on the Hill of Down, back in the 5th century — and that Saint Brigid and Saint Columba were later laid to rest beside him. By the early 1900s, so many pilgrims had been taking handfuls of soil from the site that this granite slab was placed here just to protect it.

Simple stone, big history. 🍀

📸 Thanks to Bobby for capturing this moment on one of our tours!

18/08/2026

What kind of god does a coastline like this need watching over it?🌊

Meet Manannán Mac Lir — son of the sea itself, and ruler of the Otherworld in Irish mythology, the god sailors once answered to. His boat, Scuabtuinne ("Wave Sweeper"), needed no oars or sails; it went wherever he willed it. His cloak shifted colour like the sea and could summon a mist thick enough to hide an entire world inside it. When his own people, the Tuatha Dé Danann, were defeated by the next wave of settlers to reach Ireland, legend says Manannán didn't send them away at all — he hid them here instead, under the hills, behind that same mist.

He's stood at Gortmore Viewpoint on Binevenagh Mountain for over a decade now, arms outstretched toward Lough Foyle, Magilligan Point stretching out below him and Donegal rising on the far shore. Locals here have their own quiet belief about him: that his spirit is what you feel in the wind when a real Atlantic storm rolls in off that water — which, for a god who could summon mist and stir the sea with a thought, tracks rather well.

🚗 Getting up to him is its own small adventure — about 15-20 minutes along the narrow, winding climb of Bishop's Road from Limavady, with the views getting better at every turn.

Have you visited, or is Donegal still on your list?

14/08/2026

A little glimpse of one of our guests' stops on the Dublin & Ancient East by Wild West tour: through the garden gate at Butler House, with our guide Tony leading the way.

Butler House has been the dower house of Kilkenny Castle since 1786, built for the Butler family whose story is tied up with the castle just next door. Step through the gate at the back and you're in a Georgian walled garden, restored to its former glory in 1999, with its own private entrance into the Castle Yard.

This season, the garden is sharing its borders with something a little different: bronze animals by Patrick O'Reilly, a Kilkenny man himself. His work has travelled to Paris, Cape Town, and Dublin's 3Arena over the years — playful at first glance, bears and dogs and hares, but with a quieter, more thoughtful side underneath if you take the time to look. Having his pieces standing in his own hometown's most storied garden feels like a small homecoming.

12/08/2026

Cong sits on a narrow strip of land between two lakes, Corrib and Mask, with underground streams running beneath it — which is where the name comes from: Cúnga Fheichín, 'Feichin's narrows,' after the saint who built a monastery here in the 7th century. That first monastery didn't survive, but the one that replaced it did, and you can see its ruins in the background of this photo: Cong Abbey, built in the 1100s under Turlough O'Connor, High King of Ireland.

The statue itself is much younger. It recreates a scene from The Quiet Man, filmed in Cong in 1951 — John Wayne carrying Maureen O'Hara across ground that still draws film fans back every year. This week, we watched two of our guests add their own version to that long tradition — no bronze required.

If you're curious where else in Ireland the film world has left its mark, we've rounded up more locations here: https://www.littlegemtours.com/post/film-locations-in-ireland

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Tuesday	09:00 - 17:00
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Friday	09:00 - 17:00

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