Take a guided Ireland tour with an expert

About Rising Road Tours - Why We Are Different

Samuel L. Couch (Sam) is your tour guide, host, and owner of Rising Road Tours. Sam has spent much of his life traveling the world, and has traveled throughout Ireland at least once every year for the past twenty years. His first-hand experience and knowledge of the Emerald Isle is what makes his Ireland tours special.

Creevykeel Court Tomb, Co. Sligo At Rising Road Tours, we specialize in creating escorted tours that meet your particular desires for accommodation types (castles, great houses, hotels, B&Bs) and visits to sites of your choosing.

We agree with noted humorist Garrison Keillor who observed that people do not travel to America to see freeways, air terminals, and skyscraper jungles. Astute cultural travelers visit to see everyday people engaged in everyday activities in everyday settings. Our goal is to provide such experiences for our tour participants.

Our tours do not spend a lot of time riding in large buses, stopping for twenty minutes at highly visited sites to snap photos and then return to the bus for another two hour ride to the next photo op. We do not stay in fancy hotels. We do not promote large banquets and cultural recreations aimed at large touring groups. We do not try to see twenty cities in five days.

Tour participants enjoying a sunny day Our tours are meant to be intimate, friendly, relaxing cultural adventures. As a result, we stay in rural farmhouse bed and breakfast accommodations in the Irish countryside. Here you have the opportunity to get to know the local people as they go about their daily activities. Our accommodation plans, while simple and plain, allow us to stay with a farm family for around five days. We will take field trips to local sites of interest and we will visit local museums, historical monuments, traditional craft shops, and geographic wonders on our daily outings. We try to find a balance between walking in town, hiking the bogs, visiting sites of interest, and relaxing. If you would rather stay behind at the B&B and read or rest, that's fine. In the evenings, we look for traditional music in local pubs. Sometimes this means we stay up a little later than usual; but since our schedules are flexible, we can catch up on lost sleep the next morning. We want our visitors to have as authentic and enjoyable an experience of rural Ireland and Scotland as possible.

Sam Couch at Donegal Castle, Co. Donegal Dr. Sam Couch has been leading students, friends, and small group tours to Ireland since 1984. His expertise in things Celtic developed through the years as he pursued studies in Irish literature, archaeology, language, geography, and traditional Irish culture. He directed Summer Study Abroad and Irish Studies programs at Georgia colleges and universities. These pursuits led to over forty trips to Ireland, during which Couch shared his passion for and knowledge of the Green Island with students, friends, and small tour groups. In 2005, he was certified by the Scottish Tourism Board as a ScotsMaster as recognition for his knowledge of tourism venues in Scotland. Since that time, Couch has traveled to rural Scotland, the Outer Hebrides, Orkney and the Shetland Islands seeking holiday venues complementary to Rising Road Tours Ireland customized holidays.

His first international adventure was as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal during the early 1970's. This experience began a journey that led Couch to study and visit world cultures and instilled the desire to share these remarkable experiences with others. Dr. Couch is a member of the Cross and Shamrock Division, Ancient Order of Hibernians - the oldest division in North Carolina.

On the academic front, he holds degrees in theatre (B. A.), humanities (M. A.), and cultural geography (Ph.D.). Other academic pursuits led to post-graduate studies in historical archaeology, comparative anthropology, and geographic education. Couch serves on the board of Fill the Gaps, a philanthropic organization he helped found to bring relief and establish self-sufficiency among Sri Lankan people whose lives were devastated by the December 26, 2004 tsunami. This venture was the outgrowth of tsunami-relief work Couch conducted during February 2005.

In addition, Dr. Couch has traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, and throughout the fifty United States. His hope is to share awareness of other cultures so that all of us can achieve a level of understanding and knowledge that allows each of us to become better-informed citizens of the world.

Rising Road Tours
208-962-9886 (Tel) ~ 888-648-8893 (Toll-free) ~ 888-371-8895 (fax)
sam@risingroadtours.com

1070 Greencreek Road, Greencreek, ID 83533 U.S.A.