March
Cheltenham Festival – 14th to 17th
Location: Prestbury Park, Gloucestershire, England.
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Tickets: Wednesday and Thursday tickets are still available for the famous Tattersall's grandstand, priced between €132 and €167.
For Gold Cup day the best ticket still available is the Guinness Grandstand, located opposite the final fence. Friday tickets are priced between €91 and €125.
If you're looking for a cheaper option, you can go to the Best Mate Enclosure on the opposite side of the finish line for just €29 on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday and €43 on Friday and are available on thefestival.co.uk.
Flights: You can get return flights with Ryanair to Bristol airport on any day of the festival for less than €50.
The airport is about an hour and 20 minutes from Cheltenham and is accessible via bus or train.
Accommodation: A large number of houses and apartments in the town are available for rent during festival week and tend to be the best option. They can be found at cheltenhamracingaccommodation.com for reasonable value. Hotels are understandably expensive with the Jury's Inn 5km from the racecourse coming in at €420 a night during race week.
April
US Masters – 6th to 9th
Location: Augusta National Golf Club, Augusta, Georgia.
Tickets: With tickets all sold out, a travel company is your best option. Marathonsportstravel.ie and linksgolf-ireland.com are two of the websites offering packages from Ireland. Linksgolf provides the most options with prices ranging from €1,250 (for one night and access to one practice round), to €5,900 (5 nights with access to Augusta on Friday and Sunday, as well as golf on Thursday and Saturday).
Flights: Travel to and from America must still be organised independently. Your best option is to fly Dublin to Atlanta with return prices currently under €450 with KLM.
May
England v Ireland ODI (Cricket) – 7th
Location: Lord's Cricket Ground, London.
Tickets: International matches in Lord's are popular at the best of times but particularly so for this historic clash – the first time Ireland have played England at the home of cricket. The public ballot for tickets closed at the start of the month but some should go on general sale in the near future. Prices range from €23 to €50 for adults and will be available on tickets.lords.org.
Flights: Whether you're flying in and out on the day, or home the following day, return flights to Gatwick are €55 with Ryanair.
Accommodation: Hotels in London on a summer's weekend don't come particularly cheap but there is a huge range in prices if you're not fussy about where to stay. A double room in the Hilton Hotel next to the ground can be got for €127 via trivago.ie.
Champions Cup final – 13th
Location: Murrayfield, Edinburgh.
Tickets: Tickets are already on sale now and best bought early before they're snapped up as finalist contenders are narrowed down. Prices range from €40 to €90 and can be bought on epcrugby.com/edinburgh-2017.
Flights: Expect flights to skyrocket if any Irish province reaches the final so there's no harm in booking now. If you're flying out on the morning of the match the 6.25am flight is your best option and is currently €74 with Ryanair. Flying back the following day is already pricey enough with the cheapest coming in at 8am in the morning for €108.
Accommodation: There's no getting away from the fact that this is an expensive weekend in the Scottish capital. For instance, a city centre Jury's Inn will set you back €386 just for the night of the match. If you want to make a weekend of it, an apartment may the best option. Reserveapartments.co.uk have a number of options with city centre availability for around €300 for the weekend.
Monaco Grand Prix – 28th
Location: Circuit de Monaco, Monte Carlo.
Tickets: You might need to win the lotto for this one. Grandstand tickets that aren't yet sold out for race day range from €429 to €715 on tickets.formula1.com. If you're a real high-roller you can pick up a platinum VIP ticket for just €2,190.
Flights: Nice Airport is under an hour down the French Riviera and is accessed from Dublin by Ryanair and Aer Lingus. Michael O'Leary's crew is currently working out cheaper at a return cost of €153, and Aer Lingus for €226.
Accommodation: Take a deep breath. This is Monte Carlo. On Grand Prix weekend. The cheapest hotel currently available for the Saturday and Sunday nights is the Hotel Columbus at a total price of . . . €5,790. Alternatively you could just sleep on your yacht.
June
Champions League final – 3rd
Location: Principality (Millennium) Stadium, Cardiff.
Tickets: The majority are divided between season ticket holders of the two clubs and the prawn sandwich brigade. However, a number do still go on general sale – usually on a ballot basis – with sales starting in 'Spring 2017' according to uefa.com/tickets.
Flights: Ryanair and Aer Lingus have a very limited schedule of flights to Cardiff but fear not because UK airline Flybe offer a reasonably priced alternative. On the morning of the final you can fly out from Dublin at 7.50am and back the following day at 4.10pm for €224.
Accommodation: This is Champions League final weekend so all hotels in and around the city are fully booked with the best option on trivago or booking.com being the Victoria Hotel in Newport – 18km from Cardiff. An apartment looks to be the way to go but expect to shell out. A one bedroom, five minutes walk from the Millennium Stadium, is €380 for the night of the match on homeaway.co.uk.
June/July
British and Irish Lions tour – June 24th to July 8th
Location: Whangarei, Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Rotorua, Hamilton, and Wellington, New Zealand.
Tickets: With just three test matches to choose from, tickets are understandably scarce. They can still be purchased for any of the non-test games (bar the clash with Crusaders in Christchurch) via nzlionsseries17.com/tickets.
If you want to get to one of the tests you're best off shelling out the few extra euro for a travel company package. From Ireland there are still deals available through rugbytravelireland.com but you'll have to move fast as a number have already sold out. They range from 18 nights which includes all three tests and the Hurricanes match (€8,950) to 40 nights with tickets to all 10 games for €12,495. All packages include flights, accommodation and merchandise.
Wimbledon – July 3rd to 16th
Location: Wimbledon, London SW19.
Tickets: Ballots are now closed for 2017 tickets but there are still plenty of ways to get your hands on them. A few hundred tickets for centre court generally go on sale on Ticketmaster.co.uk the day before play and are priced at €65 for the first two days with prices increasing thereafter. There is also the option of the famous Wimbledon Queue. A limited number of centre court, court number one and number two tickets are available but beware that you can pay with cash only. If you're not too pushed about who you watch and just want to sample some strawberries and cream you can get a grounds pass with access to courts three to 19 for between €20 and €30.
Flights: Heathrow is the closest airport to Wimbledon, meaning Aer Lingus is your option. Throughout the two weeks of tennis you can get return flights from Dublin for around €160.
Accommodation: As said earlier, hotels in London don't come cheap. However, the superb tube system means you can stay pretty much anywhere in the city and not face too much hassle in making it to Wimbledon. Pick an area and go to Trivago.ie to find the best deals. Going during the week will almost certainly be cheaper.
British Open – July 20th to 23rd
Location: Royal Birkdale, Southport, England.
Tickets: For practice days you can get in for just €15 with a youth price (age 16-24) of €10. Tickets for Thursday to Sunday are €65 for adults, €30 for youths and under-16s go free. There is also the excellent option of twilight tickets on the Thursday and Friday for just €30 which give access from 4pm onwards and, with play generally going until about 9pm, it's great value. Weekly tickets – which give access to all four practice days and all four tournament days – are priced at €260 and all are available at theopen.com/tickets.
Flights: From Liverpool Airport it's just 45 minutes to Birkdale by car and a little over an hour by public transport. What's even better is that flights from Dublin to Liverpool with Ryanair are just €45 return all week.
Accommodation: The relatively small size of Southport means places to stay within a short distance of Birkdale are sparse for Open week. Homeaway.co.uk has a number of cottages and apartments to rent but don't expect anything on the cheap.
There is, of course, the option of buying a ticket for one day, flying in on the morning and home that night, paying nothing for accommodation in the process.
August
Athletics World Championships – 4th to 13th
Location: Olympic Park, London.
Tickets: On four of the 10 days there are morning sessions with tickets ranging from €25 for Category D to €80 for Category A. For the evening sessions – including all of the finals – prices range from €40 to €110. All are available at tickets.london2017athletics.com.
Flights: If you're looking for as little hassle as possible in getting to Olympic Park then London City Airport is your best option to fly into as it is just 20 minutes away by train. CityJet fly from Dublin to London City and, for the 10 days in August, you can get return flights for between €115 and €160.
Accommodation: There are plenty of hotels to choose in Stratford from within walking distance of the Olympic Park. As a general indicator, the DoubleTree Hilton Hotel in Stratford works out at about €195 a night.
AND THE ALTERNATIVES...
April 7th-17th: Known as the toughest race in the world, the Marathon des Sables takes place across six days, covering a total of 251km. That's six regular marathons in six days. And the catch? It's held in southern Morocco and you run across the Sahara Desert. Oh, and temperatures can top 50 degrees centigrade. Over 1,300 people are expected to compete this year with individual registration costing €3,100.
May 25th: Probably not as exacting as the Marathon des Sables, the annual Cheese-Rolling race at Cooper's Hill In Gloucestershire attracts huge numbers. A tradition in the town since the early 1800s, competitors line up at the top of a huge hill before a giant ring of cheese is released. The first person to catch a hold of it before it reaches the bottom is the winner. Their prize? The cheese, of course.
July 7th-14th: Make sure you take out life insurance before this one. Yes, it's the famous Pamplona Bull Run. Every day for a week in July, at 8am, 3,000 people gather along the cities cobbled streets – the most sensible up the top and the brainless down the back at the large gates. The gates are then thrown open and six bulls and four oxen with razor sharp horns charge out. There is no winner here, the aim is simply to stay alive.
July 15th: Sometimes racing can be too fast and hectic. So let's slow down and chill out for this one. It is, of course, the World Snail Racing Championships in Congham, Norfolk. Competitors collect their racers from their garden and watch them make their way, very slowly, from the centre of a circle to the outside. The world record of two minutes over the 13 inch course was set back in 1995 by a snail called Archie. He's now gone to stud where he enjoys the lavish lifestyle of endless lettuce that a world record holder truly deserves.
August 28th: Do you like gravy? Yes, who doesn't. Perhaps you like it so much that you want to bathe in it. Well, not bathe in it exactly, but certainly wrestle in it. The sixth World Gravy Wrestling Championships take place in Stacksteads, Lancashire this summer. Contestants must wrestle in the gravy for two minutes whilst being scored for audience applause and various different moves. Unfortunately, wrestlers have no influence on what flavour the gravy is.
October 8th: Hark back to those childhood days of knocking chestnuts off trees to find the toughest, most robust conkers out there by taking part in the World Conker Championships in Southwick, Northamptonshire. Each match takes place on a knockout basis with both players taking three strikes before a winner is declared when a conker is smashed.
* all prices correct at the time of writing
