Day 06 – How Green Is My Valley?

I insisted on a early start today, based on several recommendations I found on the trusty internet, but my family was unimpressed when the alarm went off at 7 am. We had our second Irish Fry in as many days (that’s it, this time I’m done with it for real) and headed for the Ring of Kerry.

The internet contains many conflicting thoughts about how best to explore the Ring, the most heated debates being whether to traverse it clockwise or counter-clockwise. Real-life people told us to go clockwise so that’s what we did. We started in Kenmare, if you happen to be following along.

The Ring of Kerry is a ~200 km road that literally follows a ring around the coast of the Iveragh Peninsula around the Dunkerron mountain range, just west of Killarney. It is beautiful and absolutely worth taking your time and stopping often. Here’s a quick recap of what we did over the course of about 7 hours:

• Drove the south coastal road to the lovely town of Sneem where I found the Marino wool sweater I want but stupidly didn’t buy it. Not a spectacular drive, but not harrowing either. Both of those would come later.
• Off-roaded down a ridiculously narrow single-car strip of road for 4 km to get to Staigue Fort. This ring fort is literally a ring wall of stones 6 meters high and 27 meters across. It was built about 2500 years ago, without mortar, possibly as a place of defense. Hard to say, but it does appear to be strategically positioned to have excellent views of the surrounding lands.
• Stopped at a viewpoint outside of Caherdaniel to overlook a beach of clear blue water that might just as well have been in the Caribbean.
• Drove off-path again to see our first standing stone at Derrynane. In and of itself, it was a mildly disappointing detour but the idea that Ireland is littered with these standing stones is vastly interesting to me!
• Pulled over at a gorgeous viewpoint just passed Derrynane. Now we know why it’s called the Emerald Isle!
• Thought about going to another ring fort at Cahersiveen but tripped over a wonderful crumbling down castle instead. Free entry and no barriers. Plus a dude out front offering to let you hold one of his lambs for a photo op, and then asking for a couple of euros. I took a photo for some girl and petted the lamb as my cut of the payment.
• A final lookout point just past Kells which offered a view across Dingle Bay.
• We blew past most of the rest of the semi-interesting stops just because we were a bit burnt out by this point.

We took the long way back to Kenmare so as to avoid doubling back on the road through the national park. A few tips on the Ring of
Kerry should you ever venture this way:

• Starting early was definitely worth it. We were half way around before the busses and traffic started to get annoying, and we were able to navigate the 1-lane 4-km road to Staigue Fort pulling off for only 4 or 5 cars along the way.
• I am an advocate of the clockwise route for 2 reasons: 1) The viewpoints are on the correct side of the road for pulling off easily and 2) it seems the tour busses go the other way so you never end up stuck behind one (there is no passing on the entire Ring).
• It’s worth taking a full day and meandering down some off-roads to explore the sights rather than just driving the ring road and checking a box.

Staigue Fort

Caherdaniel

Standing Stone

Derrynane

Mystery Castle