Today we woke ridiculously early. Typical.
The weather was overcast, but warm, the sun trying to come out – towards the coast, the clouds were low and dark. Glad we weren’t doing Skelligs today. Later as we broke camp, it started to rain.
The toilet lights at this place are motion sensored, which I can totally understand to save electricity, but they keep going out after 20 seconds and you have to keep jiggling in the cubicle. Glad I don’t have to visit during the hours of darkness!
So we decided to head to a beach today – Inch Beach to be precise on the Dingle Peninsula. We drove to Killorglin which was very quiet for a Saturday morning, before turning towards Dingle. Again, beautiful scenery – mountains and wide bays. We stopped for coffee at a rather posh looking shop, standing in the middle of nowhere, on the main road. Downstairs was clothing – all tweeds and woollens, scarves and mugs and upstairs a rather large cafe with a sweeping curved window that looked down onto a lovely bay for below. We took a window seat and drank coffee – we were the only customers and I wondered who they catered for. Perhaps they relied on the hordes of tourist coach passengers spending their hard earned cash – it seemed that kind of place.
We also started noticing old abandoned stone buildings – the traditional crofter type houses – scattered here and there, every one roofless but with all the walls and the apexes at each end still standing sturdily with tufts of grass growing out of them. Some stood alone, others next to a new building. It seemed a shame that they hadn’t been maintained, but maybe that was too expensive. Later, we noticed more modern houses that had been abandoned as well. They still had their roofs, but windows were broken and rotten, net curtains grey and shredded. It was as if an elderly person had passed and the house left to rot.
Now we were back into mountain country, after the wide coastal plains around Cahersiveen. They seemed to roll down, turning into fields before hitting the sea. It’s so lush and green, trees and bushes everywhere. I was on the lookout for a postbox as I needed to post some cards, but the green postboxes aren’t easy to spot and they’re usually embedded into a wall. Helped by Google maps, I tracked one down, pleased to see that collection was at 1.30pm, a more civilised time than my home village of 7am and my cards wouldn’t be loitering the box for too long.
We finally arrived at Inch Beach, a 6 km long sliver of flat soft sand and dunes poking out into Dingle Bay. You can park directly on the beach, which we did and let The Pup out for a run and a swim. She was a very happy hound. It was a fabulous panorama of both the Kerry and Dingle peninsulas, with dark brooding clouds hanging over them, the sun peering out in the gaps and lighting up the greens on the hills. You could watch the weather here – you could even see rain showers in the valleys. After a good run and with our eyes on the tide, we headed back for a cuppa and piece of cake in the Van and watched with dismay as the Van slowly filled with sand from The Pup and our shoes! The downside of beaches – sand everywhere. We would be sweeping it out all day. As we drove out, we noted how everyone literally drives on the beach and stops, ending up parking on top of one another – there’s 6km of beach here for goodness sake. Is it the eagerness to get out onto the sand or to be near the toilets and food vendors or just sheer laziness? Weird.
We got back onto the main road to Dingle before taking an abrupt left down a tiny country back lane which took us down to a little cove. There was a little parking area, but it was full. We followed another car, but kept our distance as the driver kept stopping to take photos. We arrived in Dingle, a busy and attractive little town, but it’s main street clogged with cars. We drove through it, contemplating whether to stop, but we had no need to wander aimlessly around shops. But it had a lovely feel and was full of character. We decided to drive around the headland to Dunquin, into a land of mountains, low heavy cloud, cliffs and dry stone walls. It was quite atmospheric. The local landowners with ancient crofter cottages and beehive huts on their land, had spotted a lucrative market opportunity and were encouraging tourists to visit them “only a two minute walk!”. I’m sure they were charging for the privilege. You could see most of them from the road anyway, but good for the farmers trying to make a living from this difficult terrain.
The coastline was breath taking, but everyone else thought so too. There was a lot more traffic and humans. We went down to a parking area overlooking the coast at Coumeenoole Beach and wished we hadn’t – we ended up squeezing past cars in an already full car park, doing a 12,000 point turn and had to wait for less confident drivers. It was a nightmare and we escaped quickly, avoiding other crowded areas elsewhere. We did stop at Dunquin Pier, one of three ferry points for the Blasket Islands and had a walk around – there was a little coffee hut and two ferry ticketing sheds literally tied down with ropes. Gets a touch windy here then? We walked down a steep narrow concreted path with many others, which ended on the dockside far below. It’s here that you can catch a ferry to the Islands as a foot passenger and if you’re prepared to lug a tent over, you can camp there too. As we had no tent, we passed on that opportunity and let The Pup have a quick paddle before we climbed up again. There seemed to be many South Asians and Middle Eastern people here in big groups – whether they were on a big guided tour, we weren’t sure. We didn’t linger here and headed off again and came up to a fabulous view point overlooking a beautiful bay and the wider valley jostling with other people for the photo op. Fed up with this sudden busyness and crowds, we spied from our lofty position, Clogher Beach and headed down. The tiny car park was nearly full, but we got a space and wandered down to this lovely little sandy cove – there were a few people, but we went into a secluded corner and let The Pup in the water, though it dropped away and we were careful that she didn’t get into trouble as swimming was prohibited here. We ended up having lunch here, cobbling together bits that we found in the fridge – cheese, tomatoes, crisps sort of thing and sat in the sun by the Van and chilled.
The afternoon was wearing on. We did a big loop back to Dingle as we wanted to go over the Conner Pass. We drove past fields that veered up to the coastline and ended on the edge of a series of cliffs that just dropped dramatically away down to the sea and then around a corner another fabulous bay.
We both mentioned that we hadn’t seen any electricity pylons or towers marching across the countryside or on top of hills in south west Ireland at all – there just seemed to be miles of wooden telegraph poles, some of them seriously leaning, with heavy duty cable dangling – sometimes quite low – either by the roadside or across the fields delivering power to all these scattered and isolated homes. They just melted into the background and were unobtrusive which it should be.
We entered Dingle again and ended up on a rather modern, trendy sea front, all very smart, but teeming with people. The painted houses were back and there were a few built out of stone which were very attractive – they reminded us of the Lake District. We were tempted to stop, but it was so busy that we continued on and negotiated our way out to Conner Pass, climbing steadily into the mountains whose tops were devoured by cloud. There were various warning signs including one telling cyclists how steep it was and how far to the summit (information as a cyclist myself, I would prefer not to know about, thank you very much). We arrived at the summit parking area and managed to get views and photos both sides despite the lowering cloud. It was quite spectacular. With a caravan site to find for the night, we pulled out of the car park and started to descend. With a stone wall stopping us from plunging down the mountainside on one side and the sheer rock face on the other, the road weaved itself down the side of the mountain, but suddenly went into a bendy single carriageway and as we couldn’t see who was coming up, we stopped. A white car behind us (probably assuming we were taking photos) overtook us and proceeded down the narrowing road, only to be confronted by a long line of cars coming up. Fascinated, we watched him having to reverse all the way back up (nearly into the rock face) and let them through. Such was his impatience, he was off again and ended up squeezing past people which took many minutes. We just clocked the last car we saw before it disappeared from view and then waited for him to come through. Simples and less stressy, though we had a long queue of cars behind us……..
We dropped off the mountain and drove along the coast, turning left off the main road to the Anchor Caravan Park, some 2 miles from Castlegregory and managed to get in. Found a lovely sunny pitch and relaxed for a while before deciding to walk to Castlegregory for tea. It was a pleasant walk along a track and then onto a very straight road to the village that seemed endless. The mountains in the distance were dark and brooding under the cloud, but where the clouds broke and let the sunlight through, made it very beautiful.
Castlegregory is a small town with about five eateries so we had plenty of options. Our first two choices were either full or didn’t allow dogs, we didn’t fancy pizza so the Pizza Shed was discounted, though if we got stuck we would go back there. The local pub was closed for a wedding reception, so we waddled around to Pisces, a nice looking fish restaurant with a tasty menu. Dogs weren’t allowed inside so we sat under the covered outside area (a bit like pariahs – everybody going in and out were all dressed smartly and we were in shorts, hoodies and still a bit sandy – personally I would of put us round the back). The Pup got lots of adulation and fuss from everyone who passed which she accepted gracefully while we ordered mussels, scampi and prawns and halibut. It was really delicious all washed down with a very nice Pinot. Just perfect. As we were finishing, we noticed that the sun had disappeared as well as the mountains behind a sheet of misty rain. Not good. And guess who didn’t have their rain gear? Clutching our half bottle of wine, we retraced our steps, hoping that it wouldn’t catch up with us. We hadn’t gone far when we felt the first drizzly drops – can cope with that – but as we got to the most exposed bit, it got heavier. We stopped looking back too as all we could see was rain. Thankfully, the heavy rain was only a couple of minutes and it finally stopped. We were just a touch damp in the end and glad to get back to the Van. We did our ablutions and shut down for the night, just as the heavens truly opened and lashed it down. Snuggling under the duvet, we thanked our lucky stars – we would have got drowned.
apathtosomewhere 