Rock of Cashel (St. Patrick's Rock)

Tuesday was originally planned as a drive around the Dingle Peninsula, including a boat ride, and stops at Inch Beach and Conor's Pass.  However, given the recent rain, cold, wind, and overcast skies we decided that it might be better to head inland, so we set the GPS for the 2.5 hour drive to Rock of Cashel.

The "rock" is a 2 acre plateau rising 200 feet above the surrounding area.  Built upon it are structures dating back to 1100A.D. It is probably the largest and the best preserved ancient site we've seen in Ireland.

I'm not sure that these do a good job of representing the space, but here are a couple of panoramic photos of the inside of the cathedral.

And a panoramic photo of the Irish countryside taken from atop the Rock of Cashel

The 2.5 hour drive back to the hotel got us there just before the sun set.  Before heading down to dinner, we got our luggage organized to get out quickly the next morning.

At dinner we played fetch with Einstein, a 12 year old corgi and sheepdog mix.  The staff gathers a small handfull of stones from outside, and has a guest toss them across the room one by one.  Einstein picks up each rock and holds them in his mouth while he waits for the next to be thrown.  Once they've all been thrown, Einstein is told, "That's it. There aren't any more."  He then carries the rocks around in his mouth for 10 or 15 minutes while he is "counting them".  Once he has a good idea of how many rocks he has, he'll drop them all at the feet of a random guest and wait for that guest to pick them up and toss them.  He'll know when he's found them all and will drop them at the feet of another guest to be thrown yet again. The staff of the hotel explained that he has been known in the past to keep one rock hidden in his mouth while dropping the rest once at the feet of a guest that has thrown them multiple times. Then, with the rock hidden away in his cheek, he'll follow that guest around watching them lift chairs and look under tables trying to find the missing rock.

Look closely in that last photo and you can see he has a mouthful of rocks.

Ring of Kerry, Day 2

Woke up early, and headed down to breakfast.  Then headed back to Cahirsiveen where we stopped to see several historic sites:

The Old Abbey of the Holy Cross

The adjacent Protestant Church from the Penal time

The Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church (the only church in Ireland named after a lay person)

The Old Barracks

Then a drive across the single lane Castlequin bridge brought us back across the Valentia Bay.  The first stop on this side of the bay is Ballycarberry Castle which turned out to no longer be open to the public. We took photos from parking lot next to a dried out riverbed.

Leaving Ballycarberry, we headed on to the nearby stone forts (Cahergall and Leacanabuaile). We discovered a parking lot which we had missed the previous day, and parked the car.  We could see that the walk from the lot to Cahergall was farther than we wanted to hike in the current weather conditions, but there was a nearby hill between us and Leacanabuaile, so we weren't sure how far of a walk it would be.  We started on towards Leacanabuaile, and at the top of the hill had a great view of both forts, but could tell that the remaining walk was too far, too wet, too cold, too windy, and too steep.  We took some telephoto shots of each as well as a panoramic that included both, then headed back to car. Remembering the "NO CARS" sign from the previous day, we tried driving back to the same location, and discovered that the walk from there was just as bad, so we gave up on getting any closer to either stone fort.

That wrapped up everything that was planned for the day, but it was still early.  There was an area to the west of the main road of the Ring of Kerry that always left me wondering what's out there.  I asked Lisa if she wanted to head back to the hotel, or if she was up for an adventure.  She was willing to go find out, so we set the GPS to Ballinskelligs out on the southwest corner of the peninsula.  As we were zooming on the GPS to find the town, we discovered there are both a castle and priory/abbey in the area.  So, now we knew there'd actually be something to see after driving out there.

It was still cold, wet, and windy, and we didn't feel like walking across the beach to get to the castle, but enjoyed the view from the beach entrance.

The priory, on the other hand, we were able to park right next to.  The rain had stopped by the time we got there and the walls provided quite a bit of shelter from the cold wind.  We explored and took photos.

Leaving the Ballinskelligs area, I made an attempt to find a way to a coastal road around the peninsula.  Unfortunately I accidentally ended up on a narrow, single lane road, high on a cliff, that came to a dead end after passing several ruins. The views were amazing, and there was nobody else around, but we eventually had to turn around and retrace our path all the way back to our Ballyseede hotel.

Turned around at the sign. Entered Ballyseede into the GPS, and followed the GPS recommended route back to hotel. Needing to retrace our path added enough time that the sun set before getting back to hotel, but we managed to make it back without the headlights and without any incidents.

We had dinner at the hotel bar where we visited with a family from Cork and 2 ladies from Houston.

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.