Ireland Day 2: Rock of Cashel and Ring of Kerry (Part I)

We slept in, well as much as we can sleep in for 2 morning people, but my sister had the added kick of a night of sleep without little feet kicking her when the little monsters of the night come crawling into the bed.

We really didn’t get our motor running to head out to breakfast until 10 where we fueled up for the day and did try something new, black pudding (which I do not recommend), just say no. And sausages these are not the sausages that I am used to, it has more of a hot dog consistency and next to no flavor just a weird very finely ground meat. Nope, I’ll stick to my American bacon and eggs thank you.

Well yesterday I had all of the fun on driving on the left so it was now Lisa’s turn. Onto our first adventure of the day!!!

County Tipperary

Well one has to go to the infamous Rock of Cashel. She loomed in the west as we approached, beckoning us forward, but we couldn’t resist pulling off road and getting a shot of this majestic place from further away.

We must stress that this is a TOURIST SPOT… what do you do with a tourist spot? Get there early/late or just embrace the fact you will have crowds. We were neither early nor late so the crowds it was. Also did I mention it was hot? This was late May, which I know is summer and all but still, all of the forecasts for the week had it in the low 60’s (sorry folks we are Fahrenheit speakers here), overcast and rainy. It was nothing but clear blue skies and hot. To get up to the Rock (not the Rock in the States) you had to climb up this steep hill, maybe it just seemed steep to us because we were hot, but there was a little bit of huffing and puffing on both sides.

The Rock of Cashel was originally the seat of the King of Munster and built as a fortress. It was later donated to the church. As we wandered through, trying to not step on any of the graves but to see what made this place such a powerful place. Funny enough there was a spot for Sweeny, apparently he is everywhere. While we were wandering the grounds you could see the sweeping landscape all around you with this birds eye view, further down I could see a crumbling ruin down the way, saying I want to go there.

Where was there? Well I haven’t really heard of it before, but it is Hore Abbey. We found our way wandering down there. It really isn’t that far from the Rock of Cashel but here there are not many people around at all. This is the experience I prefer. While we were arriving a group of Harley riders where leaving. I couldn’t resist asking a few questions. They were on a few month roadtrip through Europe and they ship their own bikes over. They were in this area specifically for a friends wedding. These Harley crews, they are a family and band together. Very nice people whenever I talk to anyone.

We continue to walk and explore the abbey, finding some interesting nooks and crannies to explore. Now, here is where my heart hurts a little. Go out, have fun, but be respectful. Pack in, pack out and leave it better than you found it. It appeared that some people had come by and had themselves a real good time. How do I know this? There are beer cans littering everywhere. So I start to pick them up. At least a couple cases worth.

We did capture some additional nice moments, there was a couple who had just got married and where having their photos taken. I couldn’t help myself but to get some behind the shot shots.

We did chuckle when trying to leave the parking lot from the Rock of Cashel, we thought there was more than one exit, but there wasn’t so we had to loop around a couple of times. We were in the line to leave and were chuckling at the exit sign. Not because it was funny, but it had a few languages indicating it was the exit and in German it is Ausfahrt and one car was taking an exceptionally long time to actually leave the parking lot so we were laughing that we wanted to ausfahrt but he wasn’t ausfahrting fast enough. It was funny to us at least.

County Cork

Now Cork County was not on our planned list, sure there were things we wanted to see and explore but we had places to be and things to do so before we left for this trip we had outlined that we wouldn’t explore Cork. But we were on our way to the Ring of Kerry, and with exploring the map I saw a castle that was on our way that we could stop by and check out. It was in Cork County so I guess it was in the stars.

Now we had been working on what to call our car and while driving through County Cork we settled on Eileen, not only is it a good Irish name but more importantly we could sing Come on Eileen to her. She needed a bit of encouragement if you wanted her to chug a little faster, go up some steep inclines, or generally get moving from a stop to a decent speed. So Come on Eileen and a few pats got her going.

We stopped by Kanturk Castle, it was built (I use this term loosely as it was never finished) in 1580ish. “The Castle was built for MacDonogh MacCarthy, Lord of Duhallow around 1601 as a defense against the English. But news of its building reached England where the Privy Council, being uneasy about its purpose, ordered that building work should stop, possibly as a result of the disastrous Battle of Kinsale or possibly because MacDonagh could not borrow any more money from English moneylenders. So the castle was probably never completed. Dermot MacCarthy, into whose hands it later came, mortgaged it in 1641 to Sir Philip Perceval who after taking possession took out many of the fixtures and fireplaces to be placed in another of his properties.

The castle was donated to the National Trust Committee for Ireland by Lucy, Countess of Egmont on May 8th, 1900 under the condition that it be kept in the same condition as it was when handed over, i.e. a ruin. Kanturk Castle holds an interesting position within the National Trust movement. It was only the 9th property acquired by the National Trust and was declared inalienable under the 1907 Act. On 14th July 2000 the property was handed over to President McAleese on behalf of An Taisce, for the Irish people, at a well-publicized event on the grounds of the castle following amended legislation in Westminster.”

County Kerry Part I

After a bit more driving of dodging and weaving oncoming traffic and large farm machines we were soon in County Kerry with our first stop briefly in Kenmare to pick up necessary provisions. How did we get through Day 1 and most of Day 2 without roadtrip snacks?!! So we stopped at a market for beverages and salty and sweet snacks (but let’s be honest here it is my sister and I so it’s mostly salty). I made a good spectacle of myself by dumping all of my change on the ground as we were checking out. It appeared we found at long last some garbage and recycling bins for me to drop off the items I cleaned up at Hore Abbey, but were thwarted as the bins were not for this. Maybe this is why people litter a little more it doesn’t appear any receptacles are anywhere to be found.

We started the drive on the Ring of Kerry. Now we kept our clockwise direction of driving even through the Ring of Kerry, although I think most people go counter clockwise. It is now we are getting a few sprinkles of showers here and there but nothing much and no rainbows in sight.

As we meandered down the road we stopped to take in the views but we took off the path to stop at Staigue Fort. Now in reading about this fort it appears to close around 4 or so and we are past that time but we figured we would try anyways (researching on it now it is open anytime day or night so do not let that deter you). Before we reached the fort the dogs of hell jumped out at us and bit at the car, now he wasn’t really a dog from hell but we were not expecting him and he seemed quite territorial of his area.

When we reached the end, and the dog stopped following us we stopped at a little waterfall/wishing well, then we entered into the fort.

So many biting gnats (or so we thought of them – more on them later), I blame Lisa for us not being prepared for bugs. I think I mentioned it previously but she said there wouldn’t be any issues with bugs because if there were we would have encountered this the previous night. WRONG! Chomp, chomp, chomp. Maybe they were coming out because of the little drizzle that started just as we started to pack up, which maybe was fortuitous timing as that is when another couple was just arriving.

Our way back to the main road was much faster than getting up to the fort, and even though we knew of the dog, he still managed to startle us again as he leapt towards our vehicle when we passed through, with his sharp pointy teeth.

The light was fading and it was time to figure out where to dine and stay for the evening. We had important business first thing in the morning (the only thing we pre-booked on the trip). Looking through on Yelp there wasn’t a lot of options for dinner but we stopped in Waterville as this looked as if it had the most options available.

Most of the restaurants looked like there were shutting down early and the Fisherman’s Bar was the only one open for us. The food was quite good. I went for the steak with chips and Lisa had the fish and chips. Although she had the added bonus of having mushy peas, now why do you need to make the peas mushy? They are delightful enough in their round original state. I personally didn’t try them but Lisa was not a fan, was too much like baby food.

While dining we discussed our options for sleeping in the evening. In this roadtrip we knew we would play this day by day. There were places to stay in Waterville, so do we stay here or do we push on and perhaps even sleep in the car. Since we needed to be up early in the AM to catch our ride for the next day we decided to continue forward from Waterville to our morning destination. As phone service was getting a little spotty to check for accommodations closer to our final destination we decided to crash in the car.

It’s not as bad as it seems, the seats go all the way back and can be quite cozy. We found a nice car park on Valentia Island near Bray Head. It was a full moon that evening but it was too cloudy over head to get any good night shots of the moonlight or the reflections on the water.

Links

Our daily drive