The Ring of Kerry is a drive similar to that of Maui’s Road to Hana. We chose to drive it ourselves, which started out as a great idea and ended up as a bad one after Google sent us down a “two way road” roughly wide enough for a portly gopher. But we’ll get to that… or maybe we won’t. I like to revisit these posts to relive our trips and that’s a feeling I’m happy to leave lost to time.
TLDR; The Ring of Kerry is worth doing… but get a local driver to do it for you.
Driving ourselves started out great because it allowed us to run into friends of ours (multiple times that day, in fact) whom we knew to be in Ireland but whose schedule was unknown to us. There’s nothing quite like coming out of the bathroom to hear your wife shout “The Plata’s are in the parking lot!” in a foreign country.
The following photos are not in chronological order because some of the vistas don’t have names or warrant their own heading. Those I’ll dump here first and the the more notable stops will get their own sections.
Kenmare and the Meh Stone Circle
This is a town we stopped in for… I’m not sure what. It had a stone circle that might have been the reason for our stop? I can’t recall. Regardless, it was a cute town with some very postcard-worthy homes. I don’t suppose anyone from Ireland will ever waddle past our ranch style home and think “I need a photo” 🤷♂️
The guy working the booth at the entrance to the stone circle was a real-deal Irishman. He had the best accent of the trip and the stories to fill out the stereotype. It was Father’s Day, actually, and he had his two daughters working with him whom he forced to play us a song on their Irish flutes that was far longer than I’d imagined it to be when they started. He was very friendly and talked to Sarah about being a teacher by way of his wife also being one. The stone circle wasn’t much to behold, but it did intro us to an Irish tradition whereby people write down wishes and leave them on a “fairy tree” in hopes they’ll come true. So far no luck with mine but I left it a pretty tall order.
Staigue Fort
This was the first of two pretty dicey drives; a long, windy and narrow one lane road used as a two lane road… a trend no civil engineer with THAT MUCH OPEN LAND should adhere to but then again their national slogan isn’t “Come for Beer, Stay for the Infrastructure”.
Multiple times we had to back up to make room for oncoming traffic to pass by shimmying up to a bush kind enough to give way and at each turn you hope someone isn’t also wondering whether you’re about to come around the bend. That’s the last I’ll say about this “feature” of this drive. Again, hire a driver.
I had Sarah take a bunch of film of the roads so you could see how narrow they are. Aside from the main motorways, the one below would be considered one of the wider roads 🤦♂️ I might cut together a montage of different roads later but for now this is a small portion of the road leading up to the fort.
We ran into the Plata family again here… and at the next place too where we ended up joining them for lunch. I got fish and chips and Sarah got a world-class seafood chowder that I still wish I had ordered instead. I don’t recall the name of the town but according to Apple’s geo-tags it was in a place called “Cathair Donall”, which is Irish for “the tartar sauce is as big as the chowder”.
🖕Beach
That, of course, is not the official name of this beach but due to the road Google sent us down to get to it… that’s what I’ll know it as for the rest of my life. Hire a driver 🙃
The Ring of Kerry has some amazing views and is definitely worth doing. We cut it a little short because the driving was wearing on me but we still got to see a lot of beautiful stuff along the way.
Before setting out for Dingle, we had some final items to get to in Killarney.
