9/11 – Today I wanted to explore Ring of Beara.  The lower west coast of Ireland has several large peninsulas that jut out to the sea.  Beara is not highly touristed but seemed to have a lot of interesting places to stop.

First up was a stop at Lorge Chocolatier.  Just walking into the shop filled your senses. We purchased several for the days ahead.

Next up was Droid’s Lookout.  This didn’t show up in my research at all.  It had an interesting statue and some nice views of the valley.  There was a tavern across the street.

The Ewe Experience was our next stop.  I really wasn’t expecting much of it, but it was well worth the 7 euros.  It’s several acres of nicely done gardens with garden art.  We were given instructions to loosely follow the 50 markers and be sure to look up, look down, and look in the distance.  There were educational signboards and other boards with poetry. Lots of the art was created with recycled materials.  They didn’t beat you over the head with an environmental message, but it was certainly there.  It was very well done.   I think we ended up spending an hour and a half there and could have stayed longer. But we had only started on our journey around the peninsula.

These are only 2 of the literally hundreds of things to see at the Ewe Experience.  It may first just appear as garden art, but it was much more.  The fish on the left are made from recycled bottles.  The character on the left probably had a poem about it.  As you proceeded further into the garden, the signboards had a more pronounced message about man’s influence on the environment.

We visited Glengarriff Nature Reserve and did the walk to the waterfall.  It wasn’t much of a waterfall, nor a walk.  It was starting to rain and that squelched any ideas of walking any other trails there.

I had wanted to go to Garnish Island, but the weather was getting worse and going out on a boat didn’t seem a good idea.  I hindsight, we would have been fine because it’s so far up a bay, the water is very sheltered.  And the rain subsided a bit.  We did get some nice photos from a pullout.

 A view we had of Garnish Island, looking down a nearby inlet.  Unfortunately, the boat to Garnish Island departed several kilometers back and it was pouring rain when we passed the road to the dock.  You can see some rain in the photo on the right.  The weather was very fickle this day.

We turned off the main road and up a hill to Massmount Church Ruins.  The rain started again and we were in a very remote area.  I took a couple of pictures and we were on our way.

Our next stop was rather interesting.  Call it Dunbar Castle, Puxley Manor, or Castletownbere Loop.  There’s ruins of a 500-year old castle, a refurbished but abandoned 100-year old castle (made from the ruins of a burned out 300-year old castle), and a nature walk.

The first thing you notice is an elaborate gatehouse.  It’s not in ruins, but not maintained either. Passing that and in the distance, is a huge mansion that looks to be in similar disrepair.  As you get closer, you notice there is chainlink fencing all around and there’s no access into the Manor.  It had a long history of occupancy and vacancy.  The most recent being a large hotel chain was going to renovate it, but became victim of the crash of 2008.  (Full story here: https://apassportaffair.com/2013/11/14/ravaged-abandoned-burned-osullivan-curse-puxley-manor/ )

A view looking through one of the “windows” of the Dunboy Castle ruins.  A huge seige took place here over 500 years ago and destroyed the castle.  Nature has completely taken over it.  There were a handful of people exploring the ruins – the most we saw anywhere along the Ring of Beara.

But the real history started with the Dunboy Castle that is on the property.  It was a victim of a siege in 1602 that resulted in hundreds of deaths and curse put on the land.  The ruins of the castle are free to roam around and very overgrown.  Not much of it is left, but interesting and fun all the same.  Beyond the castle is a trail that follows the shoreline.  We walked it until the trail started heading inland.  At the mouth of the inlet, waves were crashing below the lighthouse.

Our view out to sea at Bullig Bay, Ring of Beara.  The lighthouse sits atop of Bere Island.

We drove around the end of the “Ring” and on the north shores, the roads got narrower and narrower.  Villages had the most colorful buildings.  We stopped at the ruins of Kilcatherine Church and by then we were tired and skipped out on circle forts and other random points of interest.  We headed back to our Lodge and out to dinner at The Lime Tree.  This was probably my favorite eating establishment in Kenmare.

The main road around the Ring of Beara as you head back along the northern shore.  Tour buses don’t drive the Ring of Beara.  We didn’t have it all to ourselves, but it was very pleasant for the lack of other visitors

9/12 – Today is Ring of Kerry.  Unlike yesterday’s peninsula, this one is on almost every tour and buses are frequent. You have to make the choice of whether you want to go in the same direction of bus traffic and run the risk of being stuck behind a slow moving one.  Or do you go the opposite direction and have to squeeze around them on Ireland’s narrow roads.  We decided to go with the flow and we really didn’t have much difficulty.

Our first stop was a bit off the “Ring” at Staigue Stone Fort.  There were a few cars, but no busses – I don’t think they get off the main roads. This was our first visit to a stone fort and by far the best.  You were able to go inside it, climb up it, look into chambers in the walls of it. And all for free!  I was amazed at how it was all constructed without mortar 1000 years ago.  Looking at the sides, the walls are absolute precision.  So it was a good start to our day.

Standing on top of Staigue stone Fort, Ring of Kerry.  This was the most accessible of the stone forts we went to.  You can see Fred’s and my shadows in the grass.

From there we went to Derrynane Bay and Abbey Island.  The island is completely walkable except in extreme high tides.  There are the remains of a 10^thcentury Abbey and graveyard on the island.  Most of the graves were faced outwards to the sea and had a fantastic view!

Seems like graveyards are everywhere in the country, and very visible.   Not like the cemeteries in the US.  In Ireland, there’s a mix of old and new.  Many gravesites would be of entire families and generations.  It would be a section of earth, about the dimensions of a double bed and the monument would have 16 names on it.  Sometimes additional names would be carved into the sides!  They just pack them in!  It was weirdly fascinating.

The graveyard at Abbey Island (not really an island unless high tide).  Unlike most graveyards where the headstones are turned towards the pathways, these all faced out to the sea.  You can also see the ruins of the church.

Nearby was Derrynane Manor, which appeared to be a mansion and gardens.  We only looked around long enough to find a geocache.

From this area, we could see the Skellig Islands in the distance.  They were made popular by a recent Star War movie.  I wanted to drive to a lookout that had a better view, but by the time we got there, the clouds had moved in and it started pouring rain.  Fred wanted to grab a geocache at the lookout, but it was too wet for me to want to be out looking for it.

It broke up a little bit as we drove through Waterville.  This town was not on my radar, but apparently all the tour buses stop there to let the passengers wander around and have lunch.  It was packed!

We found our way to Ballycarbery Castle ruins. It was beautiful from the outside, but surrounded by a chainlink fence.  A short distance away was the carpark for two stone forts.  By then the rains came with a vengeance and we walked to Leacanabuaile Stone Fort, griping our rain jackets and me, my umbrella. The umbrella was a mistake because it was so windy.  At least the fort was somewhat interesting and had remnants of stone houses built inside it.  I think the houses were built long after the fort served its usefulness and someone thought it would be a good place to build a house.  I understand nearby Cahergall Stone Fort is similar.  But we didn’t bother walking there because the rain was coming down so hard.

 Derrynane Bay, Ring of Kerry

We decided to call it a day and googlemaps showed a road across the peninsula through Ballaghisheen Pass.  It started okay, but got narrower and narrower. Sometimes it was raining, sometimes not. The scenery was beautiful though! I thought maybe Fred would be upset about the narrow roads but he didn’t mind it and thought the scenery more than made up for it.  There weren’t too many cars to pass.  Most of the time we found a slightly wider part of the road to do it.  But one time, we had to drive into the bushes to let the other guy pass.  It’s all an adventure, right?

Dinner that night was at the third place we tried. Our first two choices were closed on Tuesdays!  No35 Kenmare was open and we got one of the 6 tables downstairs.

The Adventure Continues>>>