Ireland Day 2: Ring of Kerry

We slept in till 9:00, and had some very meh free breakfast. The sausage in particular was sort of frightful, so we tried to feed it to the neighbor's cat. He spurned it, as did a crow, but luckily the third crow wasn't as picky.

(Adam)

Then we set off driving!  The first thing we saw was the town of Kenmare - which was very cute. We started at some random bridge we thought was Cromwell's bridge (it had nothing to do with Cromwell), but from that bridge we spotted an older bridge and made our way over to the actual Cromwell's Bridge (c. 1700, and also has nothing to do with Cromwell). After clambering over the bridge and taking too many photos, we continued just out of town to the old Druid circle.  

I think they were sacrificing him.
(Dad)

This stone circle is prehistoric, dating back 3000 - 4000 years, but rather small compared to Avebury or Stonehenge (which I'm now realizing I wrote up in a journal ((with a pen!)) and not a blog, and thus can't link to...).This is also where we were introduced to a bizarre concept - individuals owning ancient ruins. The ring was on land owned by a local family, and they put up a donation box (makes sense) and then planted trees all around so you couldn't see it until you'd donated your $2€ (total Blarney). Regardless of crass profiteering, it's always enjoyable to catch a glimpse into the lives of those that lived so far before us.

(Mom, regretting everything)

After walking back into town we picked up lunch, browsed a few stores, and set out for the Ring of Kerry to find the perfect picnic spot.  We found all those roads we were warned about! The roads were either narrow - and shared with busses - or very narrow - where meeting another car means one of you reverses to a wide spot. Despite setting off down some of these very promising back roads (that mom super didn't want to go down), we didn't find any good picnic spots, and overcome by hunger around 2pm we chose a scenic overlook at random. Great choice, as in addition to a great view it came with a plethora of wild blackberries, most of which were delicious.  

(Adam)

Continuing around the ring we veered off on some more single-track and headed to an ancient fort in the hills).  Staigue Fort is great, just dry-stacked stones around 90' in diameter, 12' thick, and 12'-18' tall. A few rooms within the walls, and plenty of stairs up to the top. It would have been a great fort even today, let alone 1600 years ago. Also, as someone who love stacking stones to building anything, it is cheering to see that this was a love shared throughout history.  We took pictures, tried to do pullups with random climbing handholds, and talked to an Australian couple - it was quite humorous to travel hours down empty roads and trails and then Bam. People in the middle of nowhere. Only a handful, so we essentially had the site to ourselves which is always nice.

We returned to the Ring of Kerry and kept taking detours further into nowhere on smaller and smaller roads (Mom was having a coronary about once a minute), and on one of these we saw an old falling-down church on the coast! Awesome! We chose to pull over and check it out. Ballinskellig Priory was an old abbey where the monks moved in the 12th century after giving up on Skellig Michael.  Ethan and I decided to jog a third a mile down the beach to the 16th century tower out on the point of the peninsula which was also great!  After free climbing up to the second floor we found out it had an easily-accessed spiral staircase we could have used.. but this way was more fun and makes up for the staircase I skipped in England and regretted ever since.  A bit more poking around, a few more pictures, and another jog back up the beach.  Finally having expended our day's allotment of wanderlust, we set off over the ridge (great views, very windy) for Portmagee where we are staying for the night.

In Portmagee we finally got in touch our captain for tomorrow - only to learn that the island of Skellig Micheal was closed due to bad weather, and thus our trip was cancelled. :'( .  So we had dinner at a seafood restaurant / pub. After dinner we wandered the seafront (the entire town is only two blocks long) and spoke with a young lad around eight years old, whose father captained for another tour company. He said they didn't know if they were going out yet, but they'd hear tomorrow morning.  He ALSO let us know that our boat was broken so our captain definitely wouldn't be going out.  We're going to yelp him so hard...

We finished off the day playing cards next to the peat fire (and with a visit from the landlady that turned into a 45 minute omnidirectional conversation. We know all about her, her family, her husband's health, their sheep, the town gossip, everything).  We didn't do as much today as yesterday, but we saw so many beautiful roads. Great day, great chats with family, great weather, and soooo pretty.

The nice thing about Adam stealing your shot is later when yours is blurry you can steal his right back...