Another fine looking morning.
We woke up slowly and started our routine of breakfast, tidy the van and prepare to pack up. This morning we enjoyed hot showers in one of the two shower rooms – private bathrooms with loo, washbasin and shower, all to yourself. My kind of camping. I dislike having to shower in a cubicle, get dried without dropping your clothes on the wet floor, then come out and pad across to the communal washbasins for further ablutions and find space for your belongings and then nipping to the loo across the room. There’s always another woman in there too, feeling exactly the same way. The other week, the bathrooms at another campsite were unisex which in my world, is quite unsettling!! So imagine my delight of locking the door to my own personal space. Perfect.
Once organised, we waddled down with The Pup to meet a 17 week old Bernese Mountain pup who lived with the owner of the campsite. He was huge, bigger than our Labrador with paws to match!! But he was totally adorable. We had a good chat while sipping coffees in the reception, before saying goodbye and setting off for the day.
Last night, we had gone for a wander hoping to find a viewpoint. We came to a fork in the road and took the lane that went up as one would think the higher you go, better the viewpoint. Alas, after a couple of hundred yards, we realised that we would have to walk a fair way before we were successful, so turned around and walked back to the site. This morning, we took the other fork to drop down to the main road and within yards, the hedges parted and we got the most wonderful vista across the bay – isn’t that just typical? We cursed to ourselves, admired the view briefly and continued down the lane. We dropped onto the coastal road heading towards the head of the Peninsula called Sheep’s Head. The hedgerows round here are full of foxgloves, honeysuckle and fuchsias, all in full flower. Really pretty. We came across the little village of Kilcrohane, with a tiny little school and a traditional village shop with a little petrol pump, yards from the front door. I wanted a picture of the shop with the pump, but decided I would take it when we came back this way.
It was another beautiful day of broken cloud and sunshine, though the wind was cool and keen. The scenery was rugged with rock and grassland, with fantastic views. The area was riddled with waymarked pathways if you wanted to investigate on foot – it had a sense of remote wilderness, but dwellings were not too far away. It was fabulous.
We arrived at Sheep’s Head car park, with a toilet block and Bernie’s cafe which was shut tight. A sign told us that dogs, even on leads, weren’t allowed beyond this point which was the path to the lighthouse some 2km away. The Pup and I stayed in the Van while hubby went to look for the lighthouse – we opened the side door and sunned ourselves and watched people come and go. Some people were dressed as if they were about to go on a polar expedition!
Hubby soon came back – he hadn’t seen the lighthouse as it was at the bottom of the rocks and he didn’t fancy going all that way downhill. We headed back, stopping at The White House, an unassuming building which was a little quirky cafe. We ordered toasties and a coffee and sat in the sun, down by the side of the cafe, surrounded by pots of flowers and shrubs – it was all a little shabby chic which was very cute, and was joined briefly by Shadow, their shaggy black dog. We carried on back to Kilcrohane to get my photo of the shop and petrol pump, but to my dismay, there were cars parked in front of it. We did wait, but nobody came out so we left without taking a photo – hopefully there would be others.
We drove through the country lanes, stopping at viewpoints, pointing out beautiful houses with floor to ceiling windows – this was Grand Design country – and drinking in the stunning scenery. There were some fantastic hills with long ridgelines that looked fun to walk if we had the time and inclination. The panoramas were so huge, that any pictures we took, just didn’t show the full beauty and the vastness of it all. We finally dropped into Bantry and parked up for a wander. It was a pleasant town, but the High Street didn’t float our boat – maybe it was a Monday and a lot of the shops were shut. It’s a large town sitting at the edge of the bay with a prominent harbour and was once a port in its own right. There were a few fishing vessels, but not much more. We spotted a SuperValu supermarket, the name and the frontage not really inspiring us, but hubby came out after a quick shop and declared that it was rather quite good with an organic section and a good selection of produce.
It was now about 2.30pm and we decided to call it a day and find a campsite for the night. Before we started this trip, we agreed that we would take it one day at a time: plan each day, but not necessarily stick to the agenda and not religiously follow the Wild Atlantic Way, but basically be very chilled and relaxed, a bit laissez faire. No need to put ourselves under pressure. So we looked up two places, chose one and rocked up at the Hungry Hill campsite in Adrigole on the Beare Peninsula, asking if they had space – which they did. It was a nice looking site, just across the way from the bay. We set up base on a grassy area between two trees and plopped down in our chairs and didn’t do much else apart from fall into conversation with other campers and watch people arrive. The sun disappeared behind cloud and didn’t really make any more effort to reappear, so it got a bit cool and threatened to rain, which never happened. So we sat inside the Van and did some homework for a route tomorrow, had tea and a bottle of wine. A perfect way to end another lovely day in Ireland.
apathtosomewhere 