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From the A*List Deals Weekly Newsletter
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Ring of Kerry, Ireland, Driving Tour
Excerpt from National Geographic Traveler: Ireland guidebook
Text by Christopher Somerville Photo by Scott Krycia
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County Kerry features the jagged coastline of three peninsulas. |
This looping route around the coast of the Iveragh Peninsula, known as the Ring of Kerry, is Ireland's best-known scenic drive. Here are the mountains, craggy coasts, and charming small towns and villages depicted in chocolate-box photographs of the west of Ireland, but close up and for real. In spite of the possibility of becoming stuck behind a caravan or crawling line of cars—and you stand a better chance of avoiding that the earlier you make your start, especially in the summer holiday season—the Ring of Kerry is one treat you must not miss. A few diversions along even narrower roads are suggested here, to give you the chance of a bit of exploration and a respite from any traffic jams on the main road.
*Bolded names and numbers in the text below correspond with our map of this tour.
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Start your full day's drive by leaving Killarney for Killorglin along the N72, with great views to your left on the outskirts of town down the wide, mountain-framed expanse of Lough Leane. In 12 miles (19 kilometers) you reach Killorglin (1), a characterful small town where each year in August a wild goat is enthroned as master of an extremely enjoyable three-day revel called Puck Fair.
Leave the main N70 Ring of Kerry route here and enter the town across its bridge, driving up the hill and taking the second street on the right (signed Caragh Lake), which soon becomes a bumpy road across forested boglands. At O'Shea's shop in Caragh village, fork left (signed "Hotel Ard Na Sidhe"), and in 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) bear left up a forest track (wooden sign: "Loch Cárthaí; Caragh Lake") for half a mile (0.75 kilometers) to a viewpoint (2). The view here sweeps over Lough Caragh to the mountains—a great place for a picnic.
Return to Caragh and turn left to reach the N70, bearing left through Glenbeigh village. A right turn just before you reach the end of the village leads to Rossbehy (Rossbeigh) Strand (3), with a wonderful view of a giant spit of shaggy dunes stretching 3 miles (5 kilometers) north across Dingle Bay toward the mountainous spine of the Dingle Peninsula. The narrow road continues in a loop back to the N70.
Continue on the N70 down the northern coast of the Iveragh Peninsula through glorious hilly scenery. Just before crossing the bridge into the village of Cahersiveen (4), glance to your left to see the ruins of the birthplace of Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847), champion of Ireland's poor and the first Irish Catholic to be elected to the Westminster parliament in London.
Turn right in the village to pass the Barracks Heritage Centre (tel +1 353 [0]66 947 2777), where there are exhibitions and displays of local interest, then cross a bridge and go left, following brown "Stone Houses" signs, to find Cahergeal and Leacanabuaile stone forts. Leacanabuaile—certainly inhabited during the Bronze Age, and maybe dating back more than 4,000 years—is especially impressive. Perched on a rock outcrop, it is a great stone-built enclosure 80 feet across (25 meters), with a square building in the center and the remains of three beehive huts, all inside a circular 6-foot (2-meter) wall.
Three miles (5 kilometers) beyond Cahersiveen, a side road (R565) leaves the N70 and makes for Portmagee, where you cross the causeway onto Valentia Island (5). This is a most delightful island of tiny patchwork fields, with fine high cliffs on the west and north, and the small but beautiful Glanleam subtropical gardens (tel +1 353 [0]66 947 6176, $). From the western tip of the island the view looks down to the remote, needle-towered rocks of Great Skellig and Little Skellig. These towering rocks in the Atlantic are seabird sanctuaries, but until the 12th century hardy monks inhabited Great Skellig. Inquiry about boats in Portmagee or Ballinskelligs may yield a fisherman willing to run you out to Great Skellig, where you climb 1,000-year-old steps to the sixth-century beehive huts and tiny oratory chapels of the monks, 700 feet (215 meters) above the waves. If you can't get hold of a boatman to land you, or sea conditions are too rough, you can always visit the Skellig Experience Centre (tel +1 353 [0]66 947 6306, closed December-March, $) near the Valentia causeway. Or you can join one of the regular nonlanding cruises around the islands from Knights Town, the downbeat "capital" village of Valentia Island.
Return from Valentia Island to the N70, where you turn right to continue your Ring of Kerry circuit. The seaside resort of Waterville stands on the beautiful sandy Ballinskelligs Bay, from where the road climbs (more very fine views of the Skelligs from here) to the classic viewpoint from Coomakesta Pass (6)—back to the Skelligs, then forward to Scariff and Deenish Islands, with the prospect improving all the time as you come in sight of the mighty, islet-fringed Kenmare River, far more like a great bay than an estuary as it opens in front of you.
At Caherdaniel take a right turn, signposted Derrynane House, stopping if you're hungry and thirsty at the Blind Piper or Freddie's Bar, both excellent pubs.
Derrynane House (7) (tel +1 353 [0]66 947 5113, closed Monday in April & October, Monday-Friday November-March, $) was the home of Daniel O'Connell from 1825 onward and is now a museum to Swaggering Dan, or "The Liberator," as his fans preferred to call him. O'Connell was a great Irishman, passionate and persevering, and inside the slate-hung house you get a good idea of the Kerry lawyer who inspired such devotion and raised such expectations among the poorest of the poor.
In the dining room a table is set with silverware presented to O'Connell by grateful supporters; upstairs in a display case is a silver cup voted to him in December 1813 by the "Catholics of Ireland." Also here are portraits, contemporary cartoons, the dueling pistols with which he killed an opponent, D'Esterre, in 1815, and, most poignantly, the bowl he was baptized in and the bed he died in.
Outside, the wooded grounds of Derrynane House are threaded by walking trails that will lead you to a ring fort and to a Mass Rock. It was here, during the 18th century when practicing the Roman Catholic religion was outlawed, that local faithful would gather clandestinely to hear Mass.
Return to the N70 and in 4 miles (6 kilometers) bear left in Castlecove to find the magnificent Staigue Fort (8). Set in a beautiful lonely valley, this wonderfully well-preserved ring fort of 1500 B.C. is well over 100 feet (30 meters) in diameter, with great thick walls in which steps lead to some fine sea and mountain views.
Back at the N70, turn left and continue as far as Sneem village, where you fork left on the R568 for a wild and lonely 30-mile (50-kilometer) mountain run, later passing the lakes of Killarney National Park and back to Killarney.
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