 Thursday
May 21 - Just before we got to Kenmare we
stopped
at roadside gift shop, Molly Gallivans (left), that boasted a
"Druid's
View" across the street (right).  I
liked the view better than the
shop
but John and Carol bought some ice cream.
It seemed that the
things that were nice were unaffordable; the rest was tacky tourist
junk. The view got us ready for the rest of the trip though!We got to the Water's Edge B&B around 4:30; Noreen is very nice and very Irish. I know that shouldn't be a surprise, but remember that our first B&B host was from New England, and the folks at Inish Beg were British. So a real "country Irish" was a bit different! The rooms are lovely, the deck and guest lounge are delightful and the breakfasts were very good. The internet wasn't very strong upstairs in our room but it's fine down in the lounge. Picture below is of us sitting on the deck at the Water's Edge.  John and I
walked into town [it was "walking distance" - took about 20
minutes but part of it was along a highway with no shoulder so we
didn't walk after that first time] and browsed a bit - he bought some
music and I got a few gifts. We met Fred and Carol at Foley's pub at 6
PM for dinner. It was okay, though not one of our best for
food
or value. But we realized belatedly that we had planned this
(or
rather, not planned it) poorly. We were going to go listen to
traditional music at McCarthy's pub at 7 PM (at Noreen's
suggestion) but when we got there, they were full. We really
should have eaten THERE and thus had a table! So we went over
to
the Coachman that also allegedly had music at 7.
[This is
considered "early" and only a few places do this on specified
weeknights. Usually music doesn't get going until 10 or
later.]
Since we weren't eating, we had to sit at the bar and order drinks we
didn't want; and the music didn't start until almost 8. The
group
was okay but very slow - long breaks between songs and long, slow
pieces rather than more traditional Irish tunes.
 Friday morning
we had delightful breakfasts then set off to
the
Ring of Beara. It was quite overcast but didn't actually rain
much. We were up in the clouds in many places but still had
awesome views (see picture on left). The road is
mostly just one lane (but 2 way) -
somehow nobody dies!  You
just learn to watch as far ahead
as
you can, and, if you meet another vehicle, whoever can backs up to a
wide spot in the road. Yes, the classic image of farmer and
his dog walking along the road is quite real!We stopped for a bit at Cuas Quay pier near Dog's Point. We walked over to the pier caves along the Kenmare River but it was so muddy that we didn't hike further than that. It was the first time I had seen a stile - a sort of stepladder for people to get over the fences, hopefully without letting the sheep out. John demonstrates using the stile on the left below. In the middle is one of the caves leading out to the river and on the right is the delightful road sign warning us about driving onto the pier!    A few miles further down the coast we came to Kilcatherine Point (at Kenmare River and Coulaugh Bay) where we stopped at the ruins of the old Kilcatherine Church, dated back to the 7th century. One of the interesting things to us was the fact that even though some of the old crosses have been dated back as far as the 8th century, there are some graves that are very recent. You can see the contrast in the pictures below - clearly some plots are still being used and lovingly tended.     The town of
Eyries - pictured on the left - provided free roadside toilets
(that were much appreciated) but had nowhere to eat in May at
noon.
(I suspect that later in the summer more pubs are open.)
You may notice from some of our pictures that many of the
towns have
homes and businesses that are painted cheery pastel colors.
We
learned that there is a Tidy Towns national competition each
year.
Apparently the colorful aspect of a town was encouraged one
year
and now we find that many, many small towns begin to look the same!
Kenmare was the Small Town winner in 2008.We found lunch at the Copper Kettle in Castletownbere on the Bantry Bay side of the peninsula. It is small and does a brisk business - it was full a few minutes after we got there. Nice people, good food, quite reasonable. It was so good that I got a "dessert to go!" We were disappointed that the cable car to Dursey Island was not running - as I understand it, they were awaiting a necessary repair part. Heading back to Kenmare, we cut across the Healy Pass. This road across the mountains from County Cork into County Kerry was built in 1847, during the famine times, as a public works project. The "new road" was renamed (from Bealach Scairt or "the way of the sheltered caves") in 1931, after the death of Timothy Michael Healy, the first Governor General of Ireland. It was not so scary as I had feared; it's a very narrow, winding road but it's quite barren and rocky in the steepest parts so it's pretty easy to see other cars coming. There were numerous opportunities to pull off the road and very little traffic. The contrast between the lush greenery at lower altitudes and the stark rocks at the high ones is startling. The pictures would have been nicer if the weather had cooperated, but still you can get the idea of what we were seeing. In the first picture you see stone fences dividing fields - most of the white dots are sheep. The center one was taken looking back at the road we had been driving on; on the right is spring runoff creating small waterfalls.    Sheep are
free ranging so yes, they wander into the
road
at times. I love the middle picture - no question about who's
in charge of this particular field, and finally, coming over the pass
from County Cork into County Kerry (the brown sign that you can't
really read says "Welcome to Co. Kerry."
  
 We
got back around 3 PM. It would have taken longer had it not been so
wet because we would have stopped more and taken longer
walks. It turns out that on weekends there is no
early
music in Kenmare.
So, having watched fishermen and shellfish harvesting all along the
coast, we went to D'Arcy Seafood House for supper. It is
pretty upscale by
our
standards; very nice atmosphere and good food. John had skate
(ray) which he enjoyed very much; I had a smoked haddock,
poached
egg and hollandaise sauce appetizer that was just the right size for my
appetite and quite yummy; Fred and Carol had fish and chips!
I
had to take this picture because it demonstrates what I mean by
"upscale." This is what "fish and chips" look like in a
classy
restaurant! A few hours later Fred and John went out in search of music. Bands did not start until after 10 PM and it was all country/western or old rock and roll (e.g. Born to Be Wild) so they shook their heads and gave up. I thought we had done adequate research but it didn't occur to me that we would have trouble finding traditional Irish music. We passed up some opportunities in Dublin thinking it would be "easy" once we got out in the countryside. It is possible to find, it just requires more preplanning than we realized. Saturday we woke to rain again - something new and different. (Did you hear the sarcasm there?) But after our yummy breakfast we headed up to Derreen Gardens. It was just wet, not raining, though the paths were quite muddy in places. The garden was lovely - many interesting plants and views of the lush countryside with the craggy mountains towering over. By the time we finished there the clouds had blown away and it was a lovely sunny day! Here are a few views from the Gardens and a tiny glimpse of some of the plants. Kenmare River Knockatee Mountain Some of the flowers     I fell in love with JAMS on Henry St. where we had lunch.
It's a
deli/cafe with natural type foods - not entirely vegetarian (Fred and
Carol had a ham/pineapple/cheese "pizza") but primarily
healthy
food. I had a very yummy salmon/spinach puff pastry
roll
with 2 side salads that of course I couldn't finish. I also
got a
chocolate/orange "brownie" for snack later on. This has been
my
second favorite place to eat so far (after the
Síbín)!We had an easy afternoon - wandered around town (a residential area shown on the right), visiting some of the craft stores and gift shops; we visited the Holy Cross church (1864) - surprisingly, I think this is the first Roman Catholic church we have found (left and center below); then we walked out to the Stone Circle c 1000 BC (below right) on the edge of town. This is the largest of the roughly 100 stone circles in southwest Ireland. The center stone (known as a "Boulder Dolmen" is rarely found outside of this area.     There
was another Stone Circle
here;
some ruins of cabins said to be from the famine; bronze age cooking
circles and an old Ring Fort. To the right is Fred viewing
and reading about the ancient cooking pit probably from 1000-2000 BC.
Below just a very typical view (note the gorse) along the N71 in
County Kerry.
Since we were having no luck with music, we elected to go to a
Community Theatre play Saturday night. Sive
by John B Keane. Keane was a local (well, County
Kerry)
author and this year was the 50th anniversary of the first production
of Sive. The evening started out badly. Due to poor planning (or rather, no planning), by the time we got back downtown it was 6:45 PM. We had to park up by the church and walk. I was concerned that waiting for a pizza at Prego would take a while and that, because some of us are slow walkers, we might have trouble getting to an 8 o'clock show that was 4-5 blocks away. So we went to the Landsdown Arms restaurant which was just a half block from the theater in the old library. (Picture to the right is taken looking down Main St from near its intersection with Shelbourne.)  That turned out to be a poor choice.
The restaurant area wasn't open that early and the Poet's Bar
(where they were presumably serving dinner) was full, so they put us in
the Sports Bar which was a disaster. There was a very loud TV
broadcasting a rugby match - the match had just ended (and so the
hostess assured us it would quiet down soon) but it had been a
championship and the after-talk went on and on. To make matters worse,
there was a huge "hen party" taking up two large tables and keeping the
staff very busy. So we didn't get served until 7:30. Since we
were so close to the theater, we did have time to eat (quickly) and get
there on time, but the food wasn't even very good so I felt like it was
definitely not worth it. The play was very well done but a tragedy. We had been warned of that but I managed to repress that and so was disappointed at the "bad" ending. But the actors and actresses did a wonderful job. This was Opening Night after having no theatre program in town for a long time so there were some kinks to work out: e.g. the second act of the play started while half the audience was still out in lobby drinking wine! But it was fun to enjoy this with the locals. 
Sunday May 24 we checked out of Water's Edge and drove north to Killarney
National Park.  (At
right we are posed at a viewpoint in the park.) We saw the
lower portion of Torc Waterfall (pictured at left).
Fred and Carol couldn't do the hiking to the top so we just
went
as far as we could drive. The road that goes to the upper
parking
area is not marked as such - it is Old Kenmare Road and we
found
it by process of elimination! Coming back down that road is
the
only place I met a tour bus. It was a steep road and I was
very
annoyed that he didn't stop where he had an opportunity but instead,
forced me to back up to find a place wide enough for him to get around
us. We toured Muckross House and Gardens - the grounds are very well-kept with lovely landscaping. I particularly liked the rock garden (on the right below). The grounds are part of the National Park and there is no admission fee - since it was such a nice day, there were many families enjoying it. There is a charge to tour the house but it was included on our Heritage Cards. It's an interesting Victorian home built in 1843 - a time when the gentry lived very well, but things like the "bell hall" bring home that there was another side to that prosperity. Each room had a bell pull for the family members to call for servants - the "bell hall" is where they rang. One of the stories we were told was that it took two years to prepare the house for a royal visit from Queen Victoria in 1861, including remodeling a bedroom and adding a fire escape because of her fear of fire. All that for a 3-day visit. Photography was not permitted inside the house but here are some pictures of the house and grounds. We had lunch at the tea room which was fairly reasonable.    
After lunch we had a pony cart ride to see some
lakes and
views we were too tired to walk to. It was okay but at
€40
it was not worth it in my opinion.  He
said he would take us to the
waterfall but actually he just drove to the trail and we were supposed
to walk up while he waited. We explained that some of us had
physical limitations and couldn't do that hike; he took us to
another lake for some more views but it's something I wouldn't do
another time. To the right is the original formal approach
to Muckross House so this is how Queen Victoria would have seen it.  Finally, we drove on into the town of Killarney and found Ross Castle. As with other sites, we found it was not well marked until you actually find the correct road and turn into it! But between maps, Jerome (the GPS) and our intuition, we tracked it down. This is a 15th century castle that has been restored using original techniques (picture at left). The tour was free with the Heritage Card and it was very interesting. There was an excellent model of the whole castle on display so we could get oriented and read about it before going through it. |