Wednesday, 18th August 2010 – Iveragh Peninsula, Ireland

A sunny day ahead as we drive the Ring of Kerry (a circular driving route on the Iveragh peninsula - that’s the next one just south of the Dingle peninsula). After a quick stop in Blennerville (near Tralee) to look at the largest working windmill in all of the UK, we grabbed coffee at a self serve Timmy’s in Killorglin, updated the blog at the library and set out on the “Ring”. We are sooo enjoying our Timmy’s.

On our travels we drove through a place called Castlemaine, which is the home of the ‘Wild Colonial Boy’ so I had to sing (attempt) a few lines of this song from long ago days, but I kept getting the tune mixed up with The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen… it was so funny, after several attempts to start out on the right (??? like those of you who know me know how ridiculous that might be) note, I toyed with the idea of calling Mary as I know she could get me started on the correct note, but then I remembered she’d be at work and the North American crowd probably wouldn’t appreciate a call in the middle of the night, so that’s the car story for today! Mary/Theresa, perhaps you can help with this in St. Mawes??

Our first stop was in the unpronounceable Cahirsiveen – big church, harbour, nice walk around a pretty town. The scenery on the drive is as you might expect, spectacular (different than Dingle which we thought was quite sandy with beautiful beaches). This is quite rocky with lots of slate and wild flowers everywhere we go. A different view around every corner - really very beautiful.

We headed for the ferry (it was just leaving, we were the last car on) to Valencia Island which is where we found the Slate Mine and the Grotto – pretty little place. We then took the bridge back to Portmagee a cute little fishing village and continued the coast road with fabulous viewpoints of the Skellig Islands. Found the Skellig Chocolate Factory along the coast road and stopped in for a taste test. Mmmmmm!!! Luckily, they take VISA!

Continued along the south coast to Sneem – we loved this place spent time there and then along to Kenmare which was quite a big place, mostly restaurants and guess what else? Then we drove to Killarney which was a particularly breathtaking road, up over the Macgillykuddy’s Reeks with awesome, totally different landscape. Then stopped in Killarney National Park at the Torc Waterfall which needs a lot more water to compete with Niagara. Drove through Killarney and Tralee on the way home for the usual stop at Ashe’s Pub (our local) and met two young trekkers from Amsterdam. What a great night and day, home by 11pm for dinner was unusual for us but very romantic dining by candlelight…