Sabbatikos

Two pieces of advice for driving the Ring of Kerry:

1) Leave early in the morning. The Ring of Kerry is much larger than the Dingle Peninsula and it will take you all day to drive the route and see the key sights along the way. It will take even longer if you plan to visit Skellig Michael (which we wanted to do, but didn’t have enough time this trip).

2) Drive clockwise. The gigantic tour buses are required to drive counter-clockwise, so by driving clockwise you’ll have half the day driving the narrow roads on the opposite side of the road without having to deal with the buses (who have the right of way).

We started from Kenmare, and about an hour later we reached our first destination, the remote and isolated ring-fort known as Staigue Fort. Staigue Fort is remarkably well preserved considering it consists of stacked rocks in a ring without the help of mortar that date back over 1700 years. It was remarkably stable and you were allowed to walk its stairs and around the ringed walls. It is believed to have been built as a fortress for a regional lord and his people.

Our next stop was the impressive Kerry Cliffs rising 1000 feet straight up from the Atlantic Ocean near the quaint village of Portmagee. From here we could see the Skellig islands. These UNESCO World Heritage Site islands were made popular again as the filming location for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Getting to the islands can be difficult due to high winds, rough seas, and rain on a very steep ascent to see the beehive huts that adorn it.

From the Kerry Cliffs we headed across a small bridge to the isolated and relatively flat island of Valentia. Valentia island has a number of holy wells dating back to the Celtic Saints as sites of pilgrimage. We were on a pilgrimage of sorts to find St. Brendan’s Well. Our friend’s son is named Brendan (after St. Brendan the Voyager) who is aid to have sailed to Valentia from Dingle sometime around 500 AD and used this well to baptize and anoint two dying pagans. While I’m not a religious person, the very boggy and rough road to this remote well had us praying for our Skoda not to get stuck in the muddy ruts. Thank you, St. Brendan!

Beyond Valentia, the north side of the Ring of Kerry (where you start to encounter the tour busses traveling the ring counter-clockwise) has less sites to visit save for more ring forts and many pullout vistas on the side of the road. As such, we continued on our way to the Dingle Peninsula where we’d spend the next few days. Before reaching Dingle we stopped at a medieval ruin known as the Minard Castle. The castle is little more than unstable ruins perched on a cliff above the shores of Dingle Bay. Nearby we found another holy well, named for St John the Baptist (as somebody swore they saw the reflection of St. John when looking into the well).

The Ring of Kerry was a beautiful drive with many stunning sites. If we had it to do over again, we might have taken another day to explore the ring at a more leisurely pace and try our luck on getting to Skellig Michael. But we had another peninsula adventure ahead, as we’d spend our leisurely pace exploring the Dingle Peninsula.