Monday 4 Aug 2008: Ring of Kerry, and our First Seisiún

WHILE WE WERE planning our trip, Margaret consulted with an Irish colleague (Tom) for ideas, and one that he listed was the Ring of Kerry. This is a drive of almost 170 kilometres around the Iveragh Peninsula, which stretches into the ocean to the west of Killarney. The Guide Killarney provided an itinerary, with bracketed excursuses from the Ring itself (which increase the distance, of course), and recommended that it was “A route for a day or a week,” and to allow a minimum of five hours.

It also said there were “over 2,000 archaeological remains” in this, “the most extensive and most varied of the Peninsular fingers” that form Kerry’s Atlantic coastline, so we reckoned it would take us more like twelve hours than eight, especially as we’d decided to start with one of the bracketed excursuses! So we were up at 8 a.m., showered, and breakfasted, before heading into Killarney to check oil, water, and tyre pressures.

We started off badly, down the N22 instead of the N72 (having misread a road sign), but put that right before long, and set off westward.

A few kilometres out of Killarney, we turned off to the left, passed through Beaufort, and followed a narrow lane that leads to (and past) the Dunloe Ogham Stones. This is a group of seven memorial stones (“X-son-of-Y” sort of style) written in Ogham script, dating from the fourth century to the seventh century. They were collected from a nearby location and set upright (the tallest being more than two metres tall) in a road-side semi-circle in the nineteenth century. An eighth from another location is recumbent among them. The seven were anciently used as roofing stones for a souterrain, and thus protected from weather erosion, so the inscriptions are exceptionally well preserved.

The Dunloe stones are off-track even for an excursus from the main Ring of Kerry route, but they lead down to the excursus we’d decided to follow. Instead of staying on the main road from Killarney to Killorglin, we took the narrow country road that crosses the rocky northern flanks of MacGillicuddy’s Reeks (Ireland’s tallest mountains), past signs pointing to tiny villages the likes of Ballagh, Cappaganneen, Carhoonahone, and Cloghbaun Rock.

After a while the road turned south, rounding the mass of Skregbeg (Screig Bheag, 573m) on our left, and leading us in towards the heart of the Iveragh Peninsula. This was the way to Lough Acoose (Loch an Chuais), tritely but aptly described as “picturesque”. The day was overcast but tranquil, with only the slightest of breezes rippling the lake’s surface, so the mountains to the east (MacGillicuddy’s very own hayricks) were brilliantly reflected in the water. It was such a pretty spot, we lingered there for some time before, knowing we had a long way still to go, we finally moved on.

Both sides of the road showed stunning scenery, either wet or vertical, and the verges were brilliant with masses of beautiful wildflowers: scarlet wild fuchsia overhanging purple loosestrife, unidentified orange blooms, anonymous creamy white flowers, nameless yellow blossoms … We saw the same wildflowers over again, at numerous points along many narrow lanes, but only where there were no safe stopping points to photograph them!

Skirting the west edge of the Lough, we turned northwestward away from it just after the few houses that make up Gortmaloon East. Passing through Shanacashel and Dromstable, we turned more westerly and came to the Blackstones Bridge over the River Caragh, which flows northwards and into Lough Caragh. The area is known as Glencar after the McCarthy clan, who were lords of this region. The five-arched bridge is a splendid specimen of nineteenth-century architecture, named for the black-stained boulders that the river rushes through. Here, hikers come to walk the Lickeen Wood; and here, the salmon-fishers gather …

Having crossed the bridge, the road turned northwards along the western shore of Lough Caragh (Loch Cárthaí), with more beautiful views of Mt Seefin to the west and the lake to the east; but at Cosha North, we turned westward away from the lake, rounding the north end of the heather-clad mountain, and so rejoined the main road (the N70, the Kerry Way) a little to the east of Glenbeigh. We passed through the town (where the tragic couple Diarmuid and Grainne hid in a cave), drove a few miles more, and suddenly, as we rounded a bend, Dingle Bay opened up before us. We stopped awhile at a viewpoint, with the steep cliffs of Drung Hill behind us and a view over the purple heather, north to the Dingle Peninsula, and north-east to the amazing sandbars—White Sand stretching north from the Iveragh Peninsula, and Inch Strand stretching south from the Dingle—which protect Castlemaine Harbour and its vital wetlands. (Here could be heard the fourth Ominous Wave of Ireland, the Tonn Toime, whose moaning once portended great disaster, and later lamented the disappearance of Ireland’s ancient nobility.)

At Cahersiveen (“Cah-here Sigh-veen”, Cathair Saidhbhín), we stopped again to photograph the sculpture of St Brendan’s boat. St Brendan (Bréanainn) the Navigator, a monk of Clonfert, sailed far out to the west in the early sixth century, in search of Tir na nÓg, the Isle of the Blessed. He and his group of fellow pilgrims voyaged for seven years in a leather-clad wickerwork boat, and may even have reached North America.

Cahersiveen was celebrating a music festival but, sadly, we had no time to spend at it. Instead, inspired by another excursus in the Guide Killarney route, we turned north in the middle of the town, drove past “The Barracks”, and crossed the bridge over the Valencia River to the unnamed mini-peninsula to the north (still part of the Iveragh Peninsula). Here we drove west along another narrow lane until we met up with a car park, where we got out and walked a trackway to An Chathair Gheal, Cahergall Stone Fort.

Cahergall (“the Bright Fort”) is a particularly fine and impressive specimen of a stone-built ring-fort (cathair), with walls five metres thick at the base, and from two to four metres tall. Its age is uncertain, either Iron Age (500 BC to 400 AD) or early Christian to mediaeval (400 to 1200 AD), and it was more likely a farmer’s stronghold than a military fortress. Either way, it was carefully and skilfully reconstructed a decade or so ago. The insides of the walls are terraced for easy ascent, and the grassed wall-tops, about two metres wide, are comfortable to sit on and easy to walk round. From there, you can get good views of the companion (unreconstructed) cathair to the north (Leacanabuaile) and Ballycarberry Castle to the south.

We crossed the bridge back to Cahersiveen, where the Kerry Way turns south towards Waterville; but, thanks again to Guide Killarney and its excursuses, we had other plans. If we continued along the Dingle Bay coast, then before us lay the Skellig Ring: the authentic, rural tip of the Iveragh Peninsula, a maze of lanes and unmarked crossroads labelled “Cars Only”.

The Skelligs are two small, rocky islands off the south-western tip of the peninsula. They are famous for their thriving puffin and gannet colonies, and for the long-abandoned sixth-century monastery perched on the larger. It’s difficult to avoid sights of them, or references to them, as you drive round this looping route and its weather-worn landscape …

So we took the R565 to Portmagee, a delightful small fishing village which lies, not on the shore of Dingle Bay, but on the south side of the channel that separates it from Dairbhre (“Place of Oaks”), known in English as Valencia Island. Portmagee (An Caladh) is a watercolour of pretty pastel cottages; but we were there for two particular purposes, the first being lunch! And indeed, having been told there was a forty-minute wait in the café we first tried—the village was packed with visitors!—we bought excellent fresh-made sandwiches at O’Connell’s Foodstore.

There are two main ways to visit Valencia Island (also spelt “Valentia”, and either way a misnomer derived from Béal Inse, “the Estuary of the Island”). One way is by ferry from Cahersiveen, or from Reenard Point a little further west; but we chose to cross the Maurice O’Neill Memorial Bridge from Portmagee (commemorating an IRA activist from Cahersiveen, who was executed by firing squad in 1942).

The far side of the channel afforded a wonderful panorama of Portmagee and the north Iveragh coastline out westwards towards where the Valencia River enters the Atlantic Ocean.
On Valencia, we followed an unmarked road westward to Foilhomurrin Bay, beyond which the road to the island’s south-western tip is unsuitable for cars. Here there was another fabulous panorama over the Valencia estuary, westwards to the Atlantic, where the pyramid-shaped Skelligs poked up on the horizon: Sceilg Beag, “Little Skellig”, the closer, and Sceilg Mhicíl, “Great Skellig” (also known as “Skellig Michael!”) the more distant.
We crossed back over Maurice O’Neill’s bridge, turned right on the R566, and continued westward through Portmagee on the Skellig Ring.

A short way down the road, at Reancaheragh, we turned almost due south and began to climb the glaciated ridge that forms the broken backbone of the Iveragh Peninsula, stretching some 40 kilometres westward from MacGillicuddy’s Reeks. To the left of the road, the slope fell smoothly away from the ridgeback to Portmagee on the Valencia Estuary below, with the Dingle Peninsula beyond it; to the right, it climbed to a jagged edge, the white cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The view was serene and beautiful; but below us we could see abandoned farmhouses and cottages dotting the green fields.

Towards the top, we stopped at a roadside shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. “May Our Lady bless you in your going your coming and your staying,” the inscription read, “Till you meet with her and Jesus, where you never more will part.” The Ordnance Survey map that we bought later told us that the grotto was the location of a “Holy Well” with an associated “cross slab”.

(The dedicatory inscription named a “Fr. P Sugrue,” a surname already familiar to us because of the apparent stranglehold on property sales in the Iveragh Peninsual held by one Pauline Sugrue, whose name we had seen on many “For Sale” signs as we drove round!)

Crossing the ridge, we took the zigzag road down to St Finan’s Bay, rounding its eastern end and cutting through to Ballinskelligs Bay and Ballinskelligs town (Baile an Sceilg) itself. Near Curraghnanav (Curach na nDamh), we took a right turn off the R566 onto the R567, and rejoined the Ring of Kerry road, the N70, heading south to Waterville.

Skirting the east shore of Ballinskelligs Bay, we climbed the northwest flank of Farraniaragh Mountain and came to the Beenarourke Pass, at the crest of the ridge that joins Farraniaragh Mountain on the east with Knockstooka to the west. Here a powerful statue of Our Lady marks the entrance to a large car park which straddles the ridge. Knowing a scenic viewing-point when we see one, we pulled in and parked, and indeed there were magnificent views to north and south.

To the north, the way we’d come from, a green valley stretched back into a blue distance where the peaks of Aghatubride, Foilclough, and Beenduff made a ridge across the horizon. But most remarkable was the round fort, in excellent condition, (presumably reconstructed) that stood near the farm buildings below the car park walls.

The view southwards was much more panoramic, from the Atlantic to the right, over the bright yellow sands of Derrynane Bay (“pronounced ‘Derrynaan’, meaning the ‘oak wood of St Fionán’”)., and eastward up the Kenmare estuary. Across the other side, the Slieve Miskish mountains formed the backbone of the Beara Peninsula.

Descending towards Caherdaniel (Cathair Donál) and driving along above the bay, we passed through Caherdaniel West, where yet another ring fort—this one rather tumbledown—was visible on farmland between the road and the sea. (Google Earth shows the remains of yet another close by, a little further down the hill, little more than a ring of stones at ground level.)

The drive along the north shore of the Kenmare Estuary has its points of interest, especially Sneem, “the Knot in the Ring of Kerry”, which still revels in its title of “Ireland’s Tidiest Town”, even though that was 1987! But not only was there less of direct interest to us, there seems to be “less” in general, certainly less “spectacle”; and though we’d have liked to see Sneem, time was getting on and we still had a long way to go to complete the Ring. We did make one exception, though: just after Caherdaniel and somewhat before Castle Cove, we turned off northwards (stopping for coffee at the Staigue Fort Hotel) to follow a narrow old road that leads to—can you guess?—another (unrestored) ring fort at Staigue … (The photo shows the view south from inside the fort’s low doorway.)

We’d proposed having dinner at Kenmare (an Irish name, but the town is actually called Neidín), at the head of the estuary, but we decided instead to return to Killarney by turning north and passing through Moll’s Gap (in MacGillicuddy’s Reeks, on the watershed of the peninsula) while it was still daylight. The panoramas are world-famous, but although the best views seemed to us to be on the south side, there was a fair amount of traffic and nowhere to pull off, so we pulled in to the parking area on the north side. Here we were able to take photos of the N71 winding in from the west and eastwards towards Killarney (and of some of the roadside sheep, perhaps even “adopt-a-sheep” sheep from the Kissane Sheep Farm. (Their site has a scanning panoramic view across the Owenreigh River valley.)

From Moll’s Gap, we drove down to the Killarney Lakes, pausing for photos from Ladys (Lady’s, Ladies’) View, which is considered the high point of the Ring of Kerry tour. (The Wikipedia explanation of the name, that it “apparently stems from the admiration of the view given by Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting during their 1861 visit,” is the commonest of several.) Our selected photo, the last of the day (in fading light), looks north-east over Upper Lake to Newfoundland Bay and the Long Range.

We drove down into Killarney, parked in the centre of town, and wandered along High St (An tSriad Ard), looking for session pubs, and deciding on “Farrell’s Town House” (aka “Crock O’ Gold”) for a 9:30 seisiún. It was about 8:30 now, and we were hungry, so we picked Gaby’s Seafood Restaurant, figuring there’d be something on the menu that would overcome Don’s seafood aversion. It was an excellent choice (if a little expensive); Margaret had asparagus, lobster, and chocolate cheese cake (not together, you understand); Don had vegetable soup, and sirloin steak with pepper sauce; and we each had a glass of champagne and a glass of wine. (Deep-fried camembert was on the menu but was sadly “not available”).

We got to Farrell’s / Crock O’ Gold well after the seisiún had started (we probably should have gone for an earlier, or shorter, dinner) but managed to find a table quite close to the musicians. There we made our presence known by joining in choruses (Don hadn’t brought his whistles). Before long, there was an invitation to move in closer, and mutual introductions with Mags (guitar, banjo, vocals) and Peter (accordion), plus two hangers-on (Mary and Bernie). We stayed with them to the end, singing our hearts out, and promised to return next night.