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Wanderung 9

Idly Eyeing an Idyllic Emerald Isle.

April 2005

April 20, 2005 - Driving around the Beara Peninsula.

The morning dawned bright and sunny, so we decided to do the loop drive around the Beara Peninsula after breakfast. But first we wanted to stop off in Kenmare to take pictures of the stone circle on the edge of town. As we drove down the main street, we saw that an open air market was being set up and decided to give that a brief look as well. It turned out to be an expensive decision! Monika and Lois bought pitchers, Lois and I bought books, and I was conned into buying a big old fashioned brass horn with a rubber squeeze bulb for 10 Euro by a smooth talking Irishman. He came down from 15 Euro to 12, and then finally to 10, and it seemed like such a good deal at the time that I couldn't resist. If I could have mounted it on the passenger side of the car and had Monika honk it as we went around all the blind corners on the Beara Peninsula, it would really have been a good deal. But as drilling holes in the door would almost certainly be frowned upon by the car rental folks, my new brass horn stayed in the trunk. Instead, I reverted to my traditional method of sounding the car horn when I couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of me, which was quite often that day.


 

The Beara Peninsula is another mountainous ridge sticking out into the Atlantic on the southwest corner of Ireland. From Kenmare we drove directly onto its northern edge and proceeded west to the tip. The road was wonderfully scenic and we had great views of Kenmare Bay to the north and the Iveragh Peninsula across the way.

The downside of the scenic route was that the road also became progressively narrower and twistier the further west we traveled. I spent much of my day ducking over to the edge of the road whenever we encountered traffic. Fortunately for my nerves, traffic was light except for the occasional (colored) sheep.

Lois wanted to see some more stone circles and when we saw the sign for Cashelkeelty Stone Circle I parked the car and we started trekking up the hill. The path wound around beside a small, picturesque stream, but it was consequently muddy in spots and covered by gnarled roots of trees in others. Almost all of the path was slippery, so we slowly teetered and slithered uphill-I almost had my boots sucked off my feet a couple of times and Monika fell flat on her face once (soft landing, fortunately). We finally reached a farm fence with a rickety wooden stile over it, but all we found was another sign pointing to the right. No distance mentioned, of course, (that would make it too simple), so I walked ¼ mile or so in that direction without seeing any clear-cut sign that I had found the circle. I found a round patch of pasture amid a lot of bare rock, but I couldn't find anything to show for certain that it was manmade and not just a natural formation. How much farther the actual stone circle was I cannot say because we never made it. (If the Gentle Reader does travel to Ireland and happens to find this circle, please send me a picture because I really would like to compare it to the one in Kenmare.)

Given how much trouble we had coming up the hill, I decided we would be better off following the fence line back toward a road rather than trying to slide back down the hill, so we tried that. The footing was better, thank heavens, but there remained the problem of getting from the field back out to the road at the end. First we tried crossing through a gate into another field that appeared to lead to a farmer's driveway, but then guard dogs started barking frantically and the sheep down the hill spooked and ran away from us, so rather than be attacked by some indignant sheepdogs, we retreated back through the gate. Continuing down the fence line we finally got about 50 feet from the road, but still had to cross a barbed wire fence to get there. Fortunately this was not a standard U.S. 3 or 4-strand barbed wire fence but rather a wire mesh below with a single strand of barbed wire on top. I held that strand up while Monika and Lois clambered through the gap and we all got out to the road with our hides intact. After that it was simple: we followed the gravel road downhill to the main road and followed that back to our car.

That unsuccessful expedition sated our appetite for walking a bit, but we still wanted to see another stone circle, so when we saw the sign for one, we turned off in that direction. We lost the trail when we found a missing (broken off) sign at the next intersection, but after exploring the surrounding roads a bit we found a field with some big rocks and an official looking signboard. The metal frame and glass, faceplate had been torn off the signboard, however, and the description ripped off, so once again I could not be absolutely certain we had found a stone circle. This was the second or third time that we had found missing street signs on the way to non-commercial attractions (e.g. Minard Castle) or missing plaques (e.g. stone circle in Kenmare), and it made me wonder. Could it be that some Irish folks are upset enough by tourists to try to vandalize the directions and markers to discourage them? It could have just been testosterone-crazed teenage males out on a vandalism spree, but we saw almost zero graffiti in that part of Ireland-2 spray painted messages on rocks in many hours of driving. Maybe the local farmer just enjoyed watching tourists get off the track and drive into his pasture and then have to back out of it like I did. ("Look out in the back 40 Mary, we got another one!")


 

Be that as it may, we continued on the drive out to the western tip after a stopping for lunch at the Urhan Inn, a roadside pub just outside of Ardgroom in the middle of nowhere. Despite the inn's remote location, two elderly local gents were having a pint (or two, or three) and gazed at us quizzically as we quickly ate lunch and climbed back into the car. Driving along the shore, we saw many rocky headlands extending into the Kenmare Bay, and the waves crashing against the shore were almost hypnotic to watch.

As the road to the tip branched off of the Beara Ring Road, we saw a Neolithic "wedge" tomb. This tomb, the Kilaugh Wedge Grave, didn't look terribly impressive but it certainly was several thousand years old, so I guess we should cut it some slack. Similarly, the ring fort we saw shortly thereafter, the Lehanmore Ring Fort, was basically a circular pile of rocks in another field. It didn't look nearly as impressive as the Staigue Fort we had seen previously on the Ring of Kerry.

At the tip of the peninsula we found the cable car over to Dursey Island, and it was just as rickety as had been described in our guidebooks. The old car was suspended above us with an open door on the side, and the cables were supported on each side of the straight by two tall, spindly-looking steel towers. It was not a situation that inspired me with confidence even though it has been in operation since 1969, so we just took some pictures and headed back down the southern edge of the peninsula.

Along the way, we repeatedly saw evidence of the havoc wreaked by the Potato Famine of 1845-1848. We passed abandoned homes, churches, and even entire villages. Some fields up on the hillside had been abandoned ever since the famine and the ensuing population crash. We could clearly see the line of demarcation between the green growing fields that were still in use lower on the hillsides and the brown, abandoned fields higher up. Clearly the famine had caused a vast depopulation of the area. We were told that the Dingle Peninsula post-famine population was 10% of the pre-famine levels, and for the Iveragh Peninsula the reduction was down to 25% of the former population.

Coming back east, we decided to cross back over the to northern side of the peninsula at Healey Pass, which had the advantage that it was too narrow and twisty for tour buses to be allowed on it. That of course also made the driving a bit challenging, but the spectacularly rugged mountain scenery made up for it. The mountains looked so rugged in part, I think, because they were formed from soft, layered rock that gets weathered into jagged waves and swirls, but no matter what the cause the end result is very impressive.

On the other side of the pass the road narrowed to one lane, but we were treated to panoramic vistas of Lake Glanmore below and Kenmare Bay in the distance. Lake Glanmore was nestled among the mountains somewhat like Lake Louise is nestled among the Canadian Rockies. These were old, worn-down mountains rather than the young, sheer spikes of the Rockies, of course, and Lake Louise is an emerald-tinted glacial lake rather than the clear blue of Lake Glanmore, but both lakes had a beautiful mountainous setting.

We wound our way slowly down from the pass, joined the main road, and drove back east past the Clooney Lakes to Kenmare. In contrast to Lake Glanmore, the Clooney Lakes were modest sized, calm lakes along the coast that looked about right for swimming, rowboats or small sailboats.

As we crossed a bridge to enter Kenmare, we stopped to take a picture of a roadside sculpture with three musicians that Lois had spotted from the road. The musicians held what looked to be an Irish hand drum, a stringed bass, and concertina, but as usual we found not a single word on what they represented, why they were here, or who had sculpted them, which was frustrating. Either we were just too early in the season for the signs to be out or else the Irish enjoyed tantalizing us innocent tourists with this unmarked attractions.

As we passed through Kenmare we stopped for a final meal at the Purple Heather bar and then wandered the streets of this "Tidy Town". And I must say that Kenmare really did look neat, clean, and colorful, as did the other Tidy Towns we saw during our trip. If you stop there on a visit to Ireland you should also, I think, be forewarned that everything except the bars and a woolens shop closes up promptly at 6 p.m. So unless you are up for an evening of pub crawling or dancing around the stone circle, there's not a lot to do in Kenmare in the evenings.

We weren't in the mood for either, so we drove back to our B&B for the night. I worked on downloading and stitching panoramic pictures for a couple hours and then brought the journal up to date. Meanwhile, Monika and Lois planned our route for the next day and worked on some crossword puzzles before reading a bit, and finally we all turned in for the night.

Copyright 2005 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog
Map
April 2005
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Epilog

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