Ireland - The South

Wednesday morning we packed up our belongings and headed down to the car hire company. After picking up our hire car and doing a few laps of central Dublin, we ended up on the right road, on our way out of the city. We have the car for 9 days and are planning on heading south and then up the west coast before dropping the car back in Dublin.
Driving through the country was amazing, everything over here is so green, the roads are so narrow and street signs impossible to find! Our first stop was at Glendalough and the Wicklow National Park. This was a very wet and very green valley and forest with some amazing old ruins in it including a church and tower. We also walked for a while to a waterfall, plenty of water. This was as far from the car as we intended to go, so of course this is when the rain became torrential. By the time we got back we were soaked. We couldn’t even run to the toilets from the car to get changed or we would have been drenched by the time we got back. A quick change in the car and we were back on the road.

Pretty hungry we stopped in a little town called Hollywood! There wasn’t much in this town, but there were two pubs! We sat in front of the fire, hung our wet clothes all around the place and had a hearty Irish Stew to warm up. After lunch we headed straight down to Kilkenny, the weather wasn’t great and we wanted to make it a fair way south so we would have time to make it to the Connemara before returning the car.
When we arrived in Kilkenny it was dark, wet and we didn’t have accommodation. It took quite a while to find somewhere to stay which was a bit annoying after a long day on the road. We finally found somewhere and a pub, only to be told they don’t serve Kilkenny, the local beer! Instead we had to settle for Guinness and Smithwicks.
Thursday we had another big day planned to make some inroads into Ireland, a small country which is deceptively big! We spent the morning looking around Kilkenny, a nice town with a rainbow, river and castle. We then hoped to head to Sheridans Pub for early lunch, but after an hour of driving around looking for it (we knew the address, just couldn’t find the street) and asking people where it was we had to give up. We made our way to the Kells Priory, an old castle ruins that is a bit off the main tourist route. Its free to visit and when we got there we had the place to ourselves, except for some council workers doing restorations and a flock of sheep. This was really cool to have the place to our self, although neither of us enjoyed it as much as we might have, on the short walk from the car we had to cross a wooden bridge. After Damien had crossed he said “be careful its slippery”, yeah yeah whatever!!! Sure enough as Christine was coming across the bridge she slipped and fell on her bum and elbow. Damien laughed at the irony, not Christine falling, but she couldn’t see the funny side to it!
Next we had to make the big decision, do we stop in Cork or do we keep going and try to get to Killarney. Cork is meant to be another lovely town and it has the famous castle and Blarney Stone. Neither of were too fussed about this, so we gave it a miss and made a beeline for Killarney. It was a long drive and again we arrived late into town. We knew where we wanted to stay, but they hadn’t been answering the phone. We decided just to show up, which meant driving about 15km out of town, 12km off the main highway and into the hills. We finally found it, Peacock Farm Hostel, although it was a bit dark looking. We knocked on the door and Owen answered the door, a guy in his mid eighties, were thought we must have been in the wrong place. Apparently the hostel is only open in the summer months as it gets too cold the rest of the year. Despite this he said for us to come in, they had one room with heating! It was freezing everywhere else, but we were the only ones to be staying there for 3 of the 4 nights, was nice to have so much space to ourselves for a change!
Friday morning we took it quite easy, just tried to stay warm in the hostel, slow breakfast and lots of coffee! The hostel is on the side of a hill overlooking the Muckross Lake. We then headed into town for a look around including the big St Mary’s Cathedral. After some more coffee and cakes we went for a drive over the Gap of Dunlow. Christine still has bit of a cold and the weather wasn’t too flash so this meant we could be mainly in the car and not needing to walk in the cold or wet. The drive was amazing, a tiny road only one car wide for most of the way. It drove along lakes and rivers in a valley between mountains on either side. It was very cloudy which made it extra “mystic and shit!” (good).
Saturday we did another drive, this time around the Ring of Kerry. This is the main attraction of the area and probably one of the main things Damien wanted to do while in Ireland. As with anything we have been looking forward to, when we woke up it was gray and cloudy. The first hour of the drive was through torrential rain. It was so bad that we didn’t stop until Waterville which is about the half way point on the drive, and this stop was for lunch in a pub. After lunch we backtracked a little bit and had a look on Valentia Island. This was quite nice with a small port and clocktower and nice cliffs and coastline roads. The main attraction down this way is the Skellig’s, which are some rock formations on Islands off the coast. Sadly the weather, which has improved slightly, wasn’t really conducive to a boat tour and there was a bit much fog to see them from the mainland. Back on the ring road, we got some nicer views of the coastline on the second half of the drive, as the weather continued to clear. Our last stop was at the Staigue Fort, which was all made of rocks in a circular pattern, and used to house a wealthy family and their servants and guards. It was then back on the road, we skipped some of the nice beaches in the area, way too wet and cold! The original plan for Sunday was to move on and start heading north. We changed our mind when we found out that there was a game of Gaelic Football in Killarney on Sunday afternoon. We went for a morning in the National Park. This was a circuit to Torc Waterfall, which was running quite fast after all the rain on the last few days. On the return side of the loop we took a wrong turn and ended up miles off the path and had to walk back along the highway instead of the walking track.
The family who own the hostel are going to the game also, so we followed them down. They were a lovely family, and in true friendly Irish style we had to make a stop on a country road to pick up one of the other local kids! The game was really good, and turned out to be a final with presentations, celebrations and speeches after the game. It was great to watch, a bit frustrating at times as there is no tackling, so there is no way to take the ball from the opponent it seems at times. We really enjoyed the game, which was played with the old mental hospital in the background! Christine also came up with quote of the week today with her comment that there are “so many rainbows!”, she is right, 10 a day, guaranteed. On the way home from the game we had a quick look at Ross Castle, which is another big medieval castle on a lake.
Monday morning we were up early, said our farewells to Owen and the Peacock Hostel and hit the road with a long day ahead of us. We were thinking of heading north and around the Dingle Peninsula, however our outing to the football has put us a day behind, so we just headed straight for the Connemara. From Killarney we headed to Glin where we were able to take the car on a ferry over the River Shannon. This meant we saved a couple of hours but also missed out on driving through Limerick.
The weather was poor, cloudy, rainy and windy. Not ideal conditions but we stopped at the Cliffs of Moher one of the more famous tourist areas in Ireland. The wind and the rain proved to be a real pain in the ass, causing havoc with the umbrella. The cliffs were nice despite the poor visibility, and of course there were rainbows everywhere.
Back on the road we continued along the coast line, which was more scenic but also a bit longer. After a few very brief stops at scenic points, we continued driving through the Burren and into Galway. We didn’t spend long in Galway, just enough time to find a nice little pub ‘Sheridans on the Docks’. We actually found it without a map which was quite a navigational achievement. After a Guinness and a Stew it had gotten dark, so we didn’t get to see much of what is supposed to be a lovely city. We considered staying the night so we could look around the following movie, but we kept going. The next hour of driving was through torrential rain on small, dark, bumpy roads. We were aiming to make it to Letterfrack, but called it a night once we reached the Connemara at the Ben Lettery hostel, which is in the middle of the wilderness.
Tuesday morning we weren’t too sure of our plan for the day, so we packed up our bags and took everything with us. The hostel was closed from 10am to 5pm, so we couldn’t come back for it until the night time otherwise. We ended up driving halfway back to Galway, just sightseeing, there were lakes and mountains we didn’t even see in the dark. We also found a country fair, where all the locals were meeting, in the middle of the highway, to buy and sell ponies and horses. Traffic Nightmare!
We then did another costal drive, in the rain! We stopped in Roundstone, a small coastal town, we were thinking of lunch here, but couldn’t find anything to tempt us. Instead we headed into Clifden for a pub meal.
Tonight we continued on to Letterfrack and the Hostel we had hoped to make it to last night, the Old Monastery Hostel. This place was old and a bit run down, but a great place to stay. Warm fireplace in the lounge, big kitchen and homemade bread and porridge for breakfast. The hostel wasn’t too busy but there were a few friendly French teachers, on school holidays. It is only a short walk from the Connemara National Park.
Wednesday we enjoyed our warm breakfast cooked for us by the owner of the hostel and then headed off up the mountain. From the hostel we could walk into the National Park and up the mountain which had 3 circuit walks up it. We did the longest and highest, which took about 3 hours. It had great views of the nearby hills, lakes, towns and coastline, although the higher we got the visibility decreased we headed into the clouds. At the top it also got very windy and quite cold.
After soup and a toasted sandwich at the hostel to warm up, we jumped in the car and spent the afternoon driving around some more of the green rolling hills in the area.
Thursday was our last day with the car, which we had to drop back in at Dublin. We drove via Westport on the east coast across Ireland to Dublin on the West coast. It took most of the day, with us taking bit of a scenic route via the Roscommon castle, an old ruined castle and a lunch stop in Athlone. Then when we did reach Dublin the traffic was terrible and we had to circle the city for a while searching for a petrol station, on a very empty tank. Once the car was returned we headed to the hostel for the night before being up early the following morning to walk to Kinlay House to be picked up for our 3 day Halloween Tour of Northern Ireland.