Ring of Kerry Tour – 16 July 2019

So we woke up to sunshine and white clouds in the sky. The bus came to our hotel to pick us up. The driver and guide was a man full of blarney, information and a love of talking about life in County Kerry today and in the past. And he obviously enjoyed leading the tour. We were fortunate to be in a coach with only 16 people and everyone was fluent in English although it was quite a variety of nationalities.

We started with a tour of the Bog Village which is a collection of old houses reconstructed into a small museum village.

We passed the bog fields on the way to the village with the cut peat stacked to dry. The houses ranged from one room with an animal pen at one end to what seemed luxury in a separate bedroom. There was also an illicit pub, and a forge.

We travelled anti-clockwise as did all the other tour buses – seemingly dozens – as we passed them at various stopping points. And some times they had to stop traffic while the bus tried to find a parking space.

The landscape was incredible with high hills or mountains in the centre, long cuttings from ancient glaciers going down to the coast where the Atlantic comes in between Kerry and the Dingle.

We stopped off at several viewing points with loads of other coaches and tourists, but the logistics worked smoothly and amicably. We stopped to see the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Church dedicated to the 18th century Irish solicitor negotiating for freedom of religion for Catholics in Ireland. Our driver described it as a small church but definitely bigger than a chapel

Travelling along the nor5h coast of the ring we continued to wind down the narrow road. No sheep on this side of Kerry but saw lots of cows and widely space farms. The next village after Cahersiveen was Waterville. This far western spit of land is peppered with remains of ancient peoples but a coach tour sadly does not have time to go visit the sites. But the views on this coast are quite extraordinary.

Coming around the headland we then started back east on the south coast of the Ring. We stopped in a little village of Sneem with its bightly coloured houses as they were preparing for a 3 day festival with carnival rides setting up on the green.

Leaving Sneem we were on our way back to Killarney. We saw rainbow sheep, all freshly shorn and painted in turquoise, or red, or green, or blue to identify their owners. We had a quick photo stop at Ladies View looking over the three lakes and then drove through Killarney National Park to our hotel.