The Irish Times

As I sat bored in the car, managing to maintain a low-grade, yet incessant, bickering with my brother, Mum and Dad would search for sights out of the windows. "Look, it's Historic Ferns!" they would yell from the front. "Stop squabbling, you'll miss Jerpoint Abbey" or "See, there's Kilkenny Castle, built on the site of a wooden tower first erected in 1172 " Summer journeys in the car were punctuated then with castles and churches, monasteries and abbeys, and the Ireland they revealed was an old country, a place almost held back by its history. A tour around new Ireland still shows you the churches and castles, of course. But lately there have been some additions. While your car journeys will take more time than they once did, clogged up in the sprawling suburbs, they will also offer some rather intriguing highlights, and not all of them ones you'd traditionally associate with the guide books. All built since the year 2000, here are (just a few of) my favourite roadside attractions.