Tonight we're at the Half Door B&B in Dingle. If you've seen the movie Leap Year, you've heard of Dingle. If you haven't seen it, it's a cute romcom and worth watching. Dingle isn't exactly as portrayed in the movie, but it's a fun little town. After pizza at a place called Little Italy, we spent the evening in the Dingle Pub listening to live Irish music and watching some fun Irish dancing. As in many of the pubs, it caters to tourists and the handsome Irish waiter/dancer enjoyed inviting tourists to join in the singing and dancing.
But I'm getting g ahead of myself. Today we drove the Ring of Kerry (we went clockwise). We didn't know what to expect as we headed out. We'd seen on YouTube that the roads are narrow, bumpy and can be crowded. The narrow, and sometimes bumpy part was true, but fortunately we didn't have a problem with crowds. The weather was perfect.
First stop was the Muckross Abbey. Seems our favorite type of churches these days are in ruins. We climbed through narrow spiral staircases and marveled at the huge tree in a central courtyard where long ago friars gathered and I don't know, made ale I think.
Our next stop was the Torc Waterfall. It is a 20 metres high, 110 metres long cascade. Beautiful. We hiked around the falls a bit before heading out again.
We stopped for a picnic lunch at Ladies' View. Supposedly one of the most photographed places in Ireland. It is beautiful.
We figured that was the best part of the drive. It was beautiful and certainly the most accessible, but it kept getting better and better. .
We stopped in the town of Sneem. We'd been looking for a spot to dump and rinse the camper cassette toilet (thankfully Andy doesn't mind this thankless job). The campground we stopped at in Killarney wasn't very helpful, but a huge thank you to the Goosey Island Motorhome Park in Sneem. For 5€ they let us use their dumping facilities. If you ever find yourself in Sneem with a camper, stop at the Goosey Island Motorhome Park!
After leaving Sneem feeling refreshed, we turned off the narrow two lane road onto a narrower, single lane two way road. We were in search of the Staigue Stone Fort. We found it about 5 km down the winding road. Fortunately we didn't meet any outbound vehicles. We had the fort to ourselves. It's a 38 meter round stone fortress dating back to the early centuries AD before Christianity came to Ireland. It was most likely occupied by an Irish Chieftain, his family, servants and guards. After dropping the requested donation of 2€ each in the donation box we explored the fort. One picture doesn't do it justice. Notice the staircases in the inside walk. We were able to climb to the top and walk around. Very cool.
Our last stop before heading to Dingle was to see the Kerry Cliffs. We weren't prepared for the grandeur of the view. We've all heard of the Cliffs of Moher. When you think of Irish cliffs, those are the ones that come to mind. The Kerry Cliffs are spectacular. We climbed up the half mile gravel path to the precipice and where amazed at the immense size and beauty of this place.
Tomorrow we go to the Cliffs of Moherim sure the will be spectacular too.
(Please pardon any typos, I took my close up contact out before writing this (on my phone) so I couldn't see very well.)
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