From Dingle to Doolin

They say that that hardy surfers ply the stormy Atlantic shores for big waves. They rent jet rescue skis to pick them up when they crash. Yesterday we wound our way around the charming Ring of Dingle and I wish to God someone had told us not to bother with the Ring of Derry because we'd be nine hours richer and a whole lot less tuckered. 

The beach at Inch, one of four that stretch more than ten miles. The Dingle peninsula is the most westerly point in Ireland and Europe. 

      Surfers catching a wave.

                       Dinner?

          The roadside.

  Dingle is one of many "Tidy Towns" in County Kerry. It's an ingenious concept to encourage town pride. Our guide in Kinsale said that Kinsale entered the contest five years ago and came in last. The shops had drab fronts and there was litter. The ingenious owner of the local paint store spearheaded a grand cleanup. Two years later, the town won the cash award and she was a well off woman.

We should bring this contest into our cities. Downtown Ottawa and Vancouver could use a cleanup.

The competition has eight criteria: Community involvement and planning; Built environment and streetscape; Landscaping and open spaces; Wildlife, habitats and natural amenities; Tidiness and litter control; Sustainable waste and resource management; Residential streets and housing areas; Approach roads, streets and lanes.

The result is spruced up places like this one.

             All dressed for work.

A public toilet is the sign of a civilised community.

On the 20 minute ferry from Tarbert to Killimer across the Shannon River en route to Doolin.

Crotty's pub in Listowell. Irish pubs are amazing -- many with music at night and spectacular food.

          The cliffs of Moher

These cliffs are a breathtaking 214 meters in height with brilliant waves crashing into the shore.

This is an island where Puffin birds nests. They weren't visiting as we peered down.

You could spend a week mixing shades of green. The fields go on forever unbroken by houses. It's breathtakingly beautiful here and when you get used to them, the narrow, winding roads have their charm.

A cottage abandoned during the potato famine. Before the famine there were 40,000 people in the Dingle Peninsula and now only 10,000. So only the lower fields are cultivated these days.

In the mid 1800s my mother's parents left Ireland during the potato famine. They would have lived in a cottage like the one above before emigrating to the new world. Originally the animals were kept in the house. But later they lived in the attached extra section.

Because the main diet of West Kerry families, (both animals and people), was the potato, when the  black rot hit, they were doubly affected. Catholics suffered mightily under English rule, and had to pay taxes for the privilege of keeping animals.

After a week here we've found our stride. I'm sure we each lost five punds in sheer terror the first few days and I would love to hear audio recordings of all the shouts and curses inside rental cars as visitors grapple with right hand drive, stick shifts on the left (Ireland is a country of stick shifts), narrow roads with tractors, gigantic tour buses, vans and non natives in the wrong lane on one side and stony hedgerows on the other with you squeezed whitefaced somewhere in between.

The Irish are a hardy, resilient, congenial and friendy people. It's odd haow we get wrapped up in our little world, sometimes worrying about little bits of nothing, especially those of us who have the privilege to travel. We sleep in our beds at night, like bits of sand on the planet. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and imagine what people are doing at that moment in all the places we've visited and then my life falls into perspective.

On to Galway. See you soon. Be well.

The Ring of Kerry

Today we circuited the 200 km. Ring of Derry, in the Iverage Peninsula, the largest of the four peninsulas jutting out into the Atlantic on the southwest coast of Ireland. An English artist who lives on part of this coast says she returns home to Portsmouth for two months in the winter, that the storms are so bad that the rain bites into you horizontally, that you can't walk or cycle without being blown over. So this is why the coast is called The Wild Atlantic West.

We stopped at a cafe en route for some Irish coffee just as this cylist was talking into her iPad, to record, I suppose the beginning of her Ring of Derry trip. I asked her where she was headed. She said, "I'm cycling 100 km. and camping out tonight." I said, "You've got quite a load." And she said, "Probably too much." 

But she was eager and all full of vim and vigour. We watched her leave, helmut and pack askew and the load way too heavy. Paniers would have helped. But even so, the route is hilly with twists and turns. We passed her about 20 minutes later stopped by the side of the road trying to adjust her back pack. I wonder how far she got before turning back.

     Most cyclists we passed had no gear.

   A view to the sea over pastures with sheep.

We met artist Nicole Tilley today in an art centre en route. She is multi-faceted -- does etchings, paper cuttings and theatrical shadow installations. Nicole received a Masters in Fine Art from The National College of Art and Design in 2011 and I discovered later that has since won many awards. You can see some of her work below.

   An installation at the art centre

    A giants table that looks inviting but is way too big to settle into.

              Ruins along the way.

        The Skellig Chocolate factory in the middle of nowhere.

     Waves crashing onto the craggy shoreline looking down from high above.

   A cliff inthe background.

  Cars are wheel to wheel with no room to spare. We were enroute today foe nine hours and bed  feels so good. 

           Good night. Sleep well.

Lavishness in Killarney

We're in the Loch Lein country home now -- our window looking out to a beautiful glacial lake. We have white robes, slippers and towel warmers in the bathroom. You get the picture. It's not like the tea houses in Nepal with their two foot wide 1" thick foam mattresses on the bed. I'll send photos of the stunning grounds tomorrow.

After six days on the road, Bob has got the hang of left hand drive. For some reason almost all those used to left handed driving edge off the road on the left either into hedgerows or other lanes of same direction traffic. So you see a lot of car left hand side scratches, dings and dents. You enter or go through most cities through a series of clockwise round abouts. They take fortitude. Fuel is $2.00 CAD/litre and you see "Traffic Calming" signs warning of construction ahead.

              En route to Killarney.

                A typical pub.

House that has seen better times.

And they left the curtains behind.

Today we toured the 65 room Muckross Mansion in Killarney. It's a little like Downton Abbey withsenior servants   upstairs and junior down. In the basement their is system of at least 40 bells, each with a separate tone signifying the room that needed attention. Imagine having to wait for someone to fetch you a cup of tea or serve you a biscuit. And imagine being a servant and having to know all those different rings. 

The mansion is a stunning peek into the way the wealthy lived in the mid 19th century. This was the Victorian era and women weren't educated beyond age fifteen. They spent their time doing needlework and organizing afternoon teas. 

Smallpox was rampant, leaving pock marks. To cover these, women mixed their makeup with beeswax. But when they warmed themselves in front of fireplaces, they had to place a stand with a protecting rectangle of fabric in front of their faces so the beswax wouldn't melt. Hence the expression, "Mind your beeswax."

In 1861 Queen Victoria visted the home. This was such a big deal that the home went through a six year period  of renovations  with new furniture, drapes and so forth for the two night visit. The queen had her own suite of six rooms. Usually visits such as this resulted in large rewards for the family estate from the queen. 

Unluckily for the Herberts, though, Prince Albert died two years later. The family received nothing. So they suffered  financial difficulties and had to sell the estate. It eventually wound up in the hands of Californians who gave the estate to their daughter and her husband as a wedding present. Finally in 1932 the 11,000 acre estate was given to the Irish nation. 

We're lucky to live now with our comfortable furniture and clothes, modern appliances and food when we want it.

Tomorrow we'll drive six hours around The Ring of Derry, a mountainous, lake splattered region with the highest peak in Ireland.

Kinsale, County Cork

Kinsale is an historic port and because of its protected habour was hard to capture. 

While the Wild West Atlantic is stormy and dramatic, the people who lived here even thousands of years ago paddled in and and out in dugout boats using the tides' ebb and flow to trade their wares. But they had only a window of four hours to get out and back.

The Spanish armada tried four times to gain a foothold here unsuccessfully. It's a casual touristic town with friendly people and the more we travel the more I realize that we are mostly good, hardworking  people who read and are frightened by too much bad news.

All was wetness and damp until the afternoon.

                    From this --

                        To this.

          Glimmering in the mist.

              Everthing glistening.

Even cactus wearing rubber boots.

      And hundreds of spiderwebs.

   Irish green and too wet to sit.

   Today 15 classic sports cars rolled into the hotel parking lot. The owners are members of the Europe Classic 2016 group.What a sight it was and there was Bob tossed back in time and yearning for his yellow TR3.

  Most roads are lined by hedgerows that hide rock under the bushes.

   This fellow is gathering Perwinkle Snails.

 Irish women's fashion is unusual and seems a bit dated. Men in vogue wear tight buttoned shirts, tight stove pipe pants ending at above the back of pointed toe leather shoes.

    

    Bob's birthday dinner at Fishy Fishy.

Tomorrow we leave for Killarney and then the spectacular Ring of Kerry. I hope things have cooled down in Ontario. Be well!