Ireland - (Feb 16-23) - Day 3 - Ring of Kerry

This day started as a mess - we needed to get the key recut, so we looked online.  There was a locksmith listed in Killarney, 40 minutes away, and google said he was open from 9am every day (today was a Sunday).

So we got an early-ish start and headed up to Killarney.  When we arrived at the Locksmiths we saw that it was a a home business and the doors and curtains were all closed.  So we tried to call.  The first time (at dead on 9am) there was no answer, so we parked the van down the road and walked down to the house.  We called again and this time the locksmith answered and it sounded like we'd woken him up.  He definitely did not sound interested in cutting keys at 9am on a Sunday despite what google said, so he directed us onwards to a lockmithing company in Tralee another 30minutes away in the opposite direction to where we'd been hoping to start our day.

When we finally arrived in Tralee we discovered that the locksmith no longer existed. We also found another 5 or 6 places that offered key cutting services along the way, but none were open on Sundays.

Eventually we gave up - we couldnt spend all day chasing a locksmith and while it was going to be annoying having no key, we could survive.  So at 11am we started our day - with a trip around the Ring of Kerry.

The Ring of Kerry is a 179km tourist route in County Kerry, that includes a variety of tourist sites, such as Ladies View (which we saw the previous day), the Skellig islands and the Staigue Fort.

We decided to take the anti-clockwise direction because we were already at the top of the route, and headed down along the coast to Cahirciveen, the site of the Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church.  The church was named after Daniel O'Connell who was known as the Liberator or Emancipator.  He was born in 1775 in Cahirciveen and was a political leader who campaigned for Catholic emancipation and the right for Catholics to serve in parliament (at this time the English parliament, held in Westminster).

The church was built in 1888 and is one of the few churches in the world dedicated to a lay person.  It is constructed on granite from Northern Ireland including a marble slab as a cornerstone that was gifted from Pope Leo XIII and sourced from the catacombs in Rome.

Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church

Unfortunately the weather was pretty terrible for this part of the trip, making the viewing of some of Ireland's most beautiful areas quite tricky.  There was substantial fog and lots of rain:

The majority of our view

I didnt get too many photos of the drive itself due to the rain, but we did get plenty at our next stop.

This was the Skellig Experience, the cliffs that overlook Puffin Island and the Skelligs.  Skellig Michael has become much more famous recently as it starred as Luke Skywalker's island in The Last Jedi, but even before that, it was an amazing place.  It is the site of a Christian Monastery and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The monastery consists of a series of stone igloo-like structures (the same ones used in the Starwars movie).  The huts building style is called clochán and involves the stacking and angling of rocks to make the huts wind-proof and water-tight.

The islands out from the cliffs included Puffin Island and the two Skelligs, Lesser Skellig (closed to the public and home to breeding colonies of Northern Gannets) and Greater Skellig (also known as Skellig Michael).  Unfortunately the tours to the island were only run in tourist season so we couldn't travel to the islands, and to make matters worse, we couldn't see the islands from the cliff due to the huge amount of fog.  The view was amazing though.

The weather on the way to the cliffs wasn't promising

Clochán huts - an example of what was on Skellig Michael

The example clochán huts were amazing.  We did have a laugh at the sign that told us that the design made them watertight - if you look at the picture you can see that they were flooded out thanks to the rain - but fortunately none of that had come through the roof...

Information

There were two cliffs we could access, the first was to the north and the second to the south, overlooking Puffin Island.  We started on the north cliff:

The view was amazing

Details about the Gannets on Lesser Skellig

and the Puffins on Puffin Island

That's Puffin Island in the distance.  The Skelligs are about 6km further out, somewhere in the fog

Info on the islands (the missing words in the bottom are "20,000 Storm Petrels" and "kittiwakes"

Information of Valentia Island to the north

View from the north cliff

Looking down

Looking further north

We then headed back to the southern cliff and climbed there, hoping for a slight glimpse of the Skelligs.

The side of the Southern cliff

The gap between south and north cliff

Heading to the furthest point on the north cliff

We could just see the outline of Puffin Island

The boys braved the wind for a quick pose

Then we were off to our next destination, the Staigue Fort.  It would be interesting to travel the Ring of Kerry in summer and see all of the sights, but for us it was a little bit of a let down as most things were closest and/or obscured by the fog and rain.

The Staigue Fort was our last stop on the Ring of Kerry - situated near Sneem in the south part of the ring, it is a stone ringfort believed to have been constructed in 300AD.

The Ring Fort

The fort was mostly ruined, but it was interesting to compare with those we saw on Öland.

The entrance

Heading in

Inside

The walls were higher than they looked - Cam and Tom here for scale

After finishing up at the fort, we headed towards our next camp site, with a quick stop at Bunratty Castle.

Bunratty Castle (Caisleán Bhun Raithe, meaning "Castle at the Mouth of the Ratty") was built around 1425.  The castle was closed when we arrived - it shuts at 4pm every afternoon to prepare for a medieval banquet.  We considered going, but at a cost of €60 for an adult and €40 for a child it was going to end up costing us €240 ($376) for a meal - it smelt amazing though!

First view of Bunratty Castle

Bunratty Castle

Side of the castle

After leaving the castle we headed to our stop for the night: Nagles Camping and Caravan Park in Doolin (Website for Nagels). I've included a link for this one as Ken Nagel was amazing.  The park was closed but after I emailed him, he gave us the code for the gates and even came out to meet us on site to make sure we had access to dump the chemical toilet (which we couldn't due to the broken key).  He had originally quoted us €32 for the night with electricity, which was a fair price, but refused to take payment as long as we left the site as we had found it.  I tried to give him €10 for the electricity we used but he wouldn't take that either.  The site was spacious and well equipped and it was nice listening to the waves in Doolin bay while we slept.  So, thanks Ken for letting us stay!

Overall it was a fun day, but with lots of driving, particularly the messing around in the morning to find a key (which failed).




Distance driven - day 3: 452km
Total Distance: 870km