THE PLESURES OF IRELAND IN WINTER.

Byline: Kevin Cullen Boston Globe

Ireland, north and south, is a different place in the so-called off season.

Its natural beauty - the Burren in Clare, the Antrim coast, the Mournes in County Down, the Wicklow hills - can be as arresting in the gloomy half-days of winter as they are in the sun-splashed days of summer.

There is a private investigator who regularly combs the worst sections of Boston, mixing regularly with stone-cold killers and hoodlums. His idea of a perfect getaway is retreating for a week to his small cottage in the west of Ireland in the dead of winter. He reads books and goes to the local pub. He unwinds.

Let's not kid ourselves. Ireland in the summertime, with the light lasting well past 10 at night, is something special. But ignoring the place during off-peak months is a mistake. Traveling to Ireland in late spring and summer requires a lot of planning to get a room or a reservation at a restaurant or a show. Traveling in winter gives you the luxury of spontaneity, of planning things almost day to day. It slows you down and makes you act more like the Irish themselves, who in general regard Type A Americans with a mix of amusement and pity.

First, the air fares are low. This winter, Aer Lingus is offering fares as low as $298 round trip. The rates for everything else - accommodations, car rentals and package tours - are also considerably lower, anywhere from 25 to 50 percent.

During summer, it is especially difficult to get into Ireland's better country houses, places like Cashel House in the rocky, rustic beauty of Connemara. More and more of the better country houses, meanwhile, are staying open year round, because winter travel to Ireland is becoming more attractive.

As for accommodations, the rule of thumb is: Do the cities - Dublin and Belfast, especially - on the weekends, when the absence of business travelers leads hotels to slash rates, and do the countryside midweek. Many of the smaller hotels and country homes in the rural areas offer deals if you stay three days or more midweek.

If you are really adventurous, spend a night or more on Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands, and bring along a copy of J.M. Synge's book about the three islands off the coast of Galway. Synge's observations, almost a century old, will seem remarkably relevant, at least the parts about the weather.

The cuisine in Ireland, as any longtime visitor will attest, has grown leaps and bounds over the last generation. More and more Irish have trained and worked abroad. New restaurants open in Dublin these days more frequently than pubs. But getting a reservation at Ireland's better restaurants in summer is as difficult as on Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket. In winter, you can spend a week in Dublin, or better yet, Kinsale in Cork, and hit the best restaurants without having to plan a month in advance.

In Dublin, the theater scene is always vibrant, and at a fraction of the cost you'd pay to see a Broadway show or a show in Boston's theater district. In Dublin, it's not unusual to pay as little as $10 to see an actor like Donal McCann in a top-flight production. The Abbey and the Gate invariably have something worth seeing. In Galway, the Druid Theatre Company is one of the more engaging, energetic young companies on the island. And Belfast's Grand Opera House, which has survived bombs - not bad shows, but real bombs - is worth seeing even if there isn't a show on.

In the dead of winter, meanwhile, traditional music sessions seem to have a special resonance, because the days are short, which means the nights are long. You can find sessions every night in Dublin, just about every night in Belfast, and in the country you'll have to ask around. Micho Russell is dead, God love him, but in winter you can still walk into Gus O'Connor's in Doolin in County Clare and find farmers playing music the way it was supposed to be played, long before the tourists found O'Connor's.

There is nothing like walking into a pub in, say, Donegal or West Cork, in the middle of winter. The turf fire and the old-timers at the bar are part of the furniture. Getting them to talk is not the problem. Leaving usually is.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the potato blight that devastated Ireland. If you have any Irish blood in you, the odds are you are not living in Ireland because of the Great Famine. While American tourists usually stick to the coastline, they would be advised to go inland, to Strokestown in County Roscommon and find the new Irish Famine Museum. It is a somber but enlightening experience.

The best thing about Ireland, of course, is its people. They're there year-round, too. And contrary to popular belief, they are no more argumentative in winter than they are on long summer nights. The pubs just close a half-hour earlier.

On Location

To learn about discounted winter fares to Ireland, call Aer Lingus at [phone]. Its planes fly into Shannon, Dublin or Belfast. You can also use Ireland as a launching pad for the rest of Europe with one-way fares to England at $60 and anywhere else in Europe at $99. For information on touring Ireland, call the Irish Tourist Board, [phone], or the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, [phone].

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Photo (Color) Even on a gloomy day, the lakes of Killarney are beautiful. Susanne Hopkins/Daily News Box On Location (See text)