Category: Ireland

Our third day in Ireland was our favorite day for the whole trip (so far at least). We left our house nice and early to drive the Ring of Kerry at a relaxed pace on down to Portmagee. While I would agree the Ring of Beara is better, the Ring of Kerry has some pretty decent sights of its own.

And then we arrived in Portmagee, a cute port town where we would be hopping on a small boat to head out on the Atlantic. Signs warned us of the dangers we had ahead, but I knew all of this already.  We found our captain and before long, hopped on board and took off.

The boat ride was definitely rougher than I was expecting. Our boat was up and down, up and down, while water continued to splash in at us. It took 40 minutes to get out to Skellig Michael, and actually landing was a whole new ordeal. Here close to the island, the boat was tossed to and fro, rocking and rolling until we were able to pull into the landing area. And then the captain and co-captain were hard at work, getting us pulled up close enough to hop off, and helping each of us along the way.

But then it was time to explore. Birds were everywhere. The Skelligs are important nesting sites, and thousands upon thousands of birds circled overhead, while even more were wandering around the cliffs. I saw a puffin fly overhead and got SO EXCITED. Little did I know, that I would be seeing them all around me in just another few minutes (there were around 10,000 on the island while we were there, according to a guide).

There are more than 600 stairs to climb to get to the monastery at the top of Skellig Michael. Monks had arrived here in the 6^th century and got to work building their beehive huts. After the boat ride I had just experienced, I cannot come close to imagining what would lead a group of people to decide to hop in a tiny wooden boat, without a motor, and cross that wild Atlantic, and then somehow get onto this cliffy island in those waves, and decide it looked like a good place to live. But they did.

I’m sure they thought they were at the end of the world as they did so. And when storms weren’t lashing at the island, I’m sure it was a quiet, peaceful place to worship. And they built these crazy little stairs we were climbing up, surrounded by puffins, and they built the beehive huts at the top to live in, worship in, cook in, etc. A whole little city. And now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

For food, they would climb back down, climb into their boats, and fish. They would try to store up enough fish to last them through the winter. They would also use the birds, eating the eggs and the meat of the puffins (breaks my heart 🙁 ). At the base of the island, they would grow vegetable gardens, where the terrain was better suited. They also introduced rabbits to the island at some point, and for a short period of time, goats as well. This also is insane to me because clearly that means they made trips to the mainland and back. For water, they had to collect rain water as there was no fresh water on the island.

The monks left the island in the 12^th century. There were two lighthouses added in the 1800s, and a few repairs made back then, but the majority of the site is exactly as it was when the monks lived on the island.

While at the top, a woman gave us the history of the island, which was truly fascinating.

Its more recent claim to fame was as the site Rey found Luke in the final scene of the most recent Star Wars movie.

After our history lesson, we went off exploring, getting views of Little Skellig.

And exploring areas we hadn’t seen yet.

And also hiking up another cliff, this one without steps, to get a better view of where we had been.

We ate a small picnic here. It was an absolutely gorgeous day to visit the island, other than a strong wind that made the stairs (which have no rails or anything, FYI) quite intimidating. It’s only accessible in the summer months, when conditions are right. Even then, only a few people are allowed on each day (13 boat operators have permits to land on the island, and those boats are small). I felt so lucky to be there.

We slowly made our way back down those rock slab steps. I took my time taking millions of pictures of puffins because I just love them SO MUCH, guys. Also, did you know that they kind of sound like cows? And they mate for life? I found several little happy couple puffins, rubbing their beaks together all adorably and such.

At the bottom, we waited for our boat to pull up. This turned out to be even more difficult than it was the first time. My stomach dropped as I watched the boats bobbing around out on the powerful waves. Our boat was able to get a few people on board, but had to pull out and come back in to get the rest of us. Once again, I was astonished that people 1500 years ago had managed the journey over and onto this island, without the technology we have now, and the landing pad, and the steps.

We rode out to Little Skellig, and I was shocked by just how many birds were nesting there. The island looked white, which I had previously thought had to be a combination of birds and flowers, but no, they were all birds. And there were whole clouds of birds circling overhead. It was insane.

But the best part is when our guide pointed out the seals down on the bottom rocks. I only had my little waterproof camera out, so I couldn’t get great pictures of them, but there were several seals flopping around, not so gracefully.

The trip back to Portmagee seemed to go a bit more smoothly (or maybe we had just had very low expectations), and once there, we took off on the Ring of Kerry again, but cut over to the Dingle peninsula where we stopped at Inch beach.

We drove through brilliant green hills and valleys throughout the rest of our short drive to Dingle town.

Dingle town is quite charming, though definitely touristy. We walked down to the harbor, and then came back up for a quick drink at the pub, where dozens of cyclists were sitting drinking and relaxing, erupting in cheers and shouts every time a new cyclist rode on up.

We then went to a pretty nice restaurant overlooking the marina for dinner, sitting out in the sun room. During this dinner, Anthony managed to put his napkin in the candle. We looked up from shoveling food in our mouths to see we had a fire on our table.

Anthony kept trying to blow it out and just kept blowing fiery ashes into my lap. I, on the other hand, grabbed the rest of my glass of water, and dumped it over the table, extinguishing the fire. So we were sitting there, eating our dinner on our wet table with the charred napkin remains, and Anthony dropped a chunk of his bread on the floor, and for some reason, this just completely set me off into a fit of giggles. I was laughing so hysterically that I was crying. All these old rich people eating around us were probably staring at us, wondering what the hell we were doing there. I’m laughing again just remembering it, and I still can’t figure out why it was so freaking funny.

Anyway. Pride gone, we finished our dinner, paid, and left. We drove out of town a bit to get to our house on the peninsula, which we are both pretty dang pleased with.

I took a lovely bath and then hung out in our sun room overlooking Mount Brandon for the rest of the evening, windows open to listen to the lambs baa-ing and the brook babbling. Can’t complain one bit.

We arrived in Cork, Ireland at around 2:45 in the afternoon, so we got our rental car sorted out, and drove west.

The sun was ridiculously bright in County Cork, illuminating the bright green fields all around us. By the time we crossed into County Kerry, the scenery was a bit more dramatic and the sky moodier. It reminded me a little of the scenery we had left behind in Scotland.

We arrived at Killarney National Park, where we went and explored Muckross House and Gardens.

The gardens were quite pretty and made for a peaceful little walk.

Afterward, we drove a small stretch of the Ring of Kerry to get to Kenmare, our base for two nights. The views on this small stretch were fantastic, though.

Kenmare is a small village, basically made up of 3 streets that form a triangle, but it is packed full of restaurants and pubs and shops. We got a bite to eat and explored a bit before calling it a night.

The next morning, we got an early start, driving the Ring of Beara. The Ring of Beara is often seen as an alternative to the Ring of Kerry, every bit as beautiful, if not more so, but much less touristy.

Instead of being stuck behind tour buses on the drive, we had the roads all to ourselves, which THANK GOD, because some of those roads are extremely narrow, and, unlike Scotland, did not have frequent designated passing places.

First stops were Gleninchaquin Park and Uragh Stone Circle. They were quite a ways off track, but the park was lovely, and the stone circle was the first stone circle I had ever seen.

We made our way back to the main road and went a bit further before parking to start our hike to the Cashelkeelty Stone Circles. I had no idea this was going to be as much of a journey as it was, but we had a fairly steep climb up through a beautiful forest. It took us close to half an hour to get to the top, I’d say. The stone circles weren’t terribly impressive, but the whole area in general was cool, and the views weren’t so bad either.

As we turned back, we were discussing what an odd concept it is to us Americans to be able to just walk around people’s property. This was someone’s land. They had sheep there. Back home, everyone’s land is fenced off with “No Trespassing” signs, but here, no biggy. As we were talking about this, a man came riding up on his 4-wheeler. Turns out he was the owner. He had a very strong accent so that we could barely understand what he was asking us. We were half expecting him to be upset that we were marching around up there (due to the conversation we had just had), but no, he was just curious as to where we were from and how our Ireland vacation was going.

So back down we went. Our next stop was supposed to be yet another stone circle, but we decided to skip that one, as well as the long walk I had wanted to do after. Instead, we took the coastal road and got stuck behind a local man trying to move his cattle. I wasn’t too concerned with this as the place we got stuck had some pretty coastal views.

We then came across Kilcatherine cemetary with its Church ruin overlooking the water.

Shortly down the road after that was the “Hag of Beara”. The story at the site was basically (in short) that the Hag was an immortal woman, forever young, that one day stole a priest’s prayer book and he chased after her and turned her into stone. This stone is there now, with plenty of tokens left by visitors. There are other stories about the hag as well, all of them fascinating. Either way, quite the imagination, as this stone simply looks like a large stone, with no resemblance to a person that I could see.

Then we visited the towns of Eyeries and Allihies, both adorable, colorful villages on the water, the latter of which we stopped at for lunch. It was after noon, but they were barely open. The man working again had a very strong accent that was hard to understand. As Anthony and I were sitting at our table, we listened as he was instructing a boy on some things to do, but we could not understand a word he was saying. In fact, we were quite certain he was speaking in Gaelic, and were talking about how Gaelic sounded so different from any other language. Turns out, he was speaking English afterall, according to the younger boy when Anthony asked him. Ha.

We spoke quite a bit with a different Irishman at the bar about Scotland and Ireland and the US. Overall, it was an enjoyable little lunch. And then we were off again, catching more great views on our way to Castletownbere.

We also stopped at Dunboy castle, which wasn’t anything to write home about, but the old, abandoned, boat ruin across from it was pretty cool.

And then we had our car climb up Hungry Hill, until a fence blocked our way. This turned out to be a bad decision, as it was nearly impossible to turn around, and there were thorn bushes all around us, scratching up our rental car, so we’ll see how that turns out :(.

But then came the real highlight, as we cut back across the peninsula via the Healy Pass.

The views here were stunning. We stopped and sat, enjoying the weather and the scenery. Once we had gotten to the end, we almost wanted to turn around and go back across again. But instead, we made our way back home. We had planned on hiking the Gap of Dunloe in the evening, but were pretty exhausted, so decided to just enjoy Kenmare town instead. We bought ourselves some pretty amazing ice cream, and stopped in at a pub for a pint of Guinness while listening to some trad music. Cheers!