It’s the helipad that throws me. Well, that and the nine-hole golf course.

At £553 for a five-day, all-inclusive walking holiday, based in Clifden, on the west coast of Ireland, I’m anticipating a gnome-fronted B&B complete with doilies. Instead, I find myself in the grounds of an ivy-clad castle, wishing I owned a set of golf clubs. And a helicopter.

My room boasts an acre of floor space, an imposing fireplace and a four-poster bed that actually boings.

There’s just time for a few laps of the roll-top bath before I join my fellow walkers for a champagne reception at the bar. Thus anaesthetised, we’re treated to a slide show of the Atlantic islands that we’ll be exploring in the days to come; some of the slides are slightly off-kilter, and when the projector jams, it clacks like an impatient woodpecker, but this merely adds to the show’s amateur appeal.

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Equally appealing are the locally caught prawns – pan-fried in butter and garlic – that we’re served for dinner, and the magic wine glasses that, despite our best efforts, never seem to empty. We’ve yet to stroll a single step and we’re already in agreement that this is the best walking holiday we’ve ever been on.

We eventually set off the following morning from Killary harbour, at the mouth of Ireland’s only fjord. Gerry, Connemara’s affable archeologist-in-residence, leads us along an old famine-relief road that follows the fjord inland; built by the Quakers, it provided employment for locals left destitute by Ireland’s potato famine. Today, it’s little more than a disjointed stone causeway cut into the slopes of the fjord, but it provides panoramic views over the cloud-capped mountains on the far side, and the mussel lines that litter the water below.

Lunch is served gratifyingly early, on a small bridge overlooking the fjord. Brian, our endlessly energetic host, produces no fewer than eight bottles of wine from the depths of his ruck-sack. I do a quick calculation: that’s almost a bottle a head. Now, generally speaking, I try to avoid drinking whole bottles unless there’s a bed within staggering distance, but in the event, Brian’s infectious bonhomie proves hard to resist.

Once our glasses have been charged, great slabs of smoked salmon are unfurled onto our outstretched palms and doused in freshly squeezed lime juice. There’s more than enough for seconds, and thirds. If Bacchus had been Irish, I can’t help thinking, this is how he’d have eaten.

Another hour or two of gentle walking brings us to the head of the fjord, where we board a bus for the short drive to Cleggan harbour. Clearly concerned that we haven’t had a proper drink for – ooh, at least three hours – Brian plies us with more champagne before we set sail for Inishbofin, one of three inhabited islands that are scattered along the Connemara coast.

En route, we make a quick detour to Inish Shark, a tiny outcrop of an island that’s strewn with roofless stone ruins. Made infamous by a 1928 gale that drowned the island’s entire male population, it’s a bleak and desolate place, and it seems difficult to believe that there were people eking out an existence here as recently as the 1960s.

Inishbofin – two miles away and barely two miles across – isn’t much bigger, though it does boast a harbour, a road and a huddle of modest hotels. The Doonmore, our home for the night, has no helipad, but it’s every bit as welcoming; if our hostess, Eileen, goes any further out of her way to make us feel at home, she’ll fall off the end of the pier. And then there’s the food: the fish tastes so fresh that it probably flapped its way into the frying pan.

Day two begins with a full Irish breakfast (like a full English, but fuller), followed by a ramble around the west end of the island, taking in the ruins of ancient hillforts and medieval monasteries. But it’s the journey across to Inishturk, the next destination in our island-hopping itinerary, that provides the day’s highlight.

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