Ring of Kerry, Day 1

Having skipped Muckross Abbey two days earlier, we thought we'd try stopping at Muckross Abbey again in hopes that the weather would be a bit better today. It's in the Killarney National Park a short ways out of Killarney on the Ring of Kerry. I knew the first section of the Ring of Kerry involved driving to Kenmare, so I entered Kenmare into the GPS and started driving assuming that I'd recognize the Muckross Abbey parking lot as we approached it.

We stopped for fuel at the first place we saw after we got out of town.

We had just driven down to Kenmare the previous day, and this road just didn't feel familiar. I took a closer look at the route on the GPS and discovered that there are 2 routes to Kenmare and we were on the wrong one. I entered Muckross into the GPS and followed the updated route through some very narrow roads and residential areas back to the proper route.

The Abbey was more impressive than expected.  There were multiple corridors and rooms spread out over two levels.

We took some time to sit on a bench and rest a bit before the hike back to the car. The abbey sits in the midst of a cemetery, and as we rested on a bench, we noticed a single burial site with 9 names and dates on the headstones.  Based on the limited information available from the headstones we passed time attempting to work out how they were all related and how some of them may have died.

The next stop on our trip around the Ring of Kerry was Torc waterfall. It was an uphill hike, but it was worth it. The waterfall and surrounding area was very beautiful. We had stopped here on our previous trip to Ireland and everything was much as we remembered it.

Then back out to the narrow two way Ring of Kerry road, stopping briefly at an old church we had seen on our last trip here. Having just been down this road two days earlier in the rain, it was surprising to see that the mountain peaks were now snow-covered.

We really didn't want to spend our entire time today re-visiting all the exact same sites we had seen just 5 years ago, and Lisa had done some research ahead of time looking for sites that were a bit more "off the beaten path". So, we skipped over most of the other popular stops and continued on to the town of Cahirdaniel, the site of the Cahirdaniel ring fort. It wasn't easy to find it from the directions Lisa had.  The vehicle GPS wasn't aware of it at all, and we passed the turn off the main road twice before pulling out a phone and searching for it on Google Maps.  It was a steep drive down a gravel road that looked like someone's driveway. You'd definitely miss it if you didn't know where to look.  We drove down the slope and stopped to take some photos.  There were some nice flowers along side the "road" as well.

Next stop on our "off the beaten path" itinerary was the Eightercua Stone Row, originating from 1700 BC.  We discovered there really wasn't any way to get close to this without traipsing across someone's private property. We turned onto a small side road as close as we could get, and used the telephoto lens to snap some photos from the bottom of a hill.

After that we quickly made our way around the peninsula stopping only for a moment to capture a photo of the iconic Charlie Chaplin statue as we passed through Waterville.

When we arrived in Cahirsiveen, we had some time available, so we decided to find some of the sites that were in our plans for visiting the next day.  We made our way around the north side of Valentia Bay to Leacanabuaile Stone Fort near Ballycarberry Castle. When we encountered a sign on the side of the road that read "NO CARS", we found there wasn't a parking lot, or anywhere to park the car out of the road.  We couldn't see the stone fort from the car, and it was getting too late to hike.  We decided to head to our hotel and come back tomorrow now that we knew where we were headed.

We passed through Castlemain (birthplace of Wild Colonial Boy) and then on to Ballyseede Castle Hotel arriving in the rain under overcast skies about 90 minutes after sunset.

It was our first time this trip driving after dark, and we made the surprising discovery that the headlights didn't work on the car we rented.  Fortunately there was enough light from the parking lights that we were able to make it without incident through the mostly empty roads to the hotel.  Since there wasn't a convenient place nearby to get it taken care of, and the remaining days of the trip were expected to be at the hotels by sunset each night, we decided to just continue with our plans and keep an eye on the time and distance remaining each day.

There was a large Irish Wolfhound dog sleeping in entry-way to the hotel from the parking lot.  He wasn't really interested in waking up or moving, so we climbed over him.  We got checked in, ordered room service for dinner, discovered that the hotel had horrible internet service, and went to sleep quite early.