We left the town of Kinsale on Sunday morning and headed to the Dingle Peninsula. Here are a couple parting shots of Kinsale that I took the morning we left.
We had a great parting breakfast at the Old Presbytery Inn:
And hit the road. (four kinds of meat if you include the white and black pudding)
Here is is a map to give you an idea of where we are and where we are heading. We are in the very southwest corner of Ireland. We are heading up the coast over the next few days and will end our trip cutting across back to Dublin over the weekend . The southwest coast of Ireland is very rugged (at least by Irish standards).
We had an easy day of traveling and spent some time in the Killarney National Park:
And had a nice picnic on the grounds of a Muckross house which is located within the park and on the shore of Muckross lake. The estate has hundreds of acres of property and is a “calendar house” with 365 windows and 52 fireplaces.
From Killarney, we went on to the town of Dingle, another colorful town but this one located on the Dingle Peninsula. It was a beautiful drive and the town was great. About half the size of Kinsale, but with 900 people it still had 58 pubs. Many of the pubs double as other businesses during the day such as a bike repair shop, a hardware store and a leather shop. Many of the pubs had music and we listened to some good Irish music both nights we were there. We stayed in a modern 14 room inn overlooking the bay.
The town is located on Dingle Bay and on Monday morning we went out sea-kayaking. It was a 3 1/2 hour trip and we headed to the mouth of the bay (much rougher than we were used to – but fun and manageable). We went into a cliff side cave in the kayaks and got a glimpse of the resident, semi-tame dolphin that lives in the mouth of Dingle Bay.
We spent the afternoon driving around the Penninsula, getting caught in Dingle rush hour,
Saw some of the local sites, including this clochan, which dates sometime between 400 – 1200 ad.
We finished the day with some hikes along the cliffs:
And got a little too close for my taste:
On the way back to town, we stopped by the Dingle Crystal workshop run by Sean Daly and his sons. He was a master cutter for Waterford for a number of years before opening his own shop. There were about 5 people in the gift store portion of the workshop and Sean invited us back to watch him cut some crystal. It was amazing. With just a few rough lines drawn on the glass, Sean would cut deep intricate patterns in the stemware. Beautiful stuff. We picked up a couple tumblers that really captured our interest.
Will pick up with Tuesday morning and our day of cliff walks next….
Tampaskis Travel 