We'd heard so much about Kerry, Cork and Kilkenny that we decided the south would be a good place to spend a week. Well, 6 days anyway...
I hadn't driven for well over a year so it was great to hire a car and hit the roads.
We started off heading south towards Limerick. We had planned on seeing Bunratty Castle on the way back to Galway but saw the signs to it and decided to call in first.
Bunratty Castle was to be the first of many castles we'd see during the week. It was once a stronghold of the local tribe and was restored a few years back and is in quite good nick. Admission price lets you into a reconstructed town with all sorts of old-style 'authentic' houses, shops and a school, before you come to the castle itself.
It's quite interesting walking around the castle, climbing the tight spiral stone staircases and taking a look around, but there's really not much more you can say about castles... they're big, cold, bare but awesome.
Next we drove the short distance to Limerick. This is a city known not so foldly as 'Stab City' - and therefore has quite a bad reputation and probably misses out on a lot of visitors. And to tell you the truth it's quite an ugly city. We only stopped to check out King Johns Castle. This is situated on the banks of the river Shannon, and includes excavations of the original fortifications and pre-norman housing.
An hour or so later we arrived in Killarney in County Kerry. It was getting pretty damn cold by this time and not long after started snowing, which was a nice touch.
Killarney is a strange little town. It's not very big, however it's packed full of pubs, restaurants and little shops - seems to be pretty tourist-orientated. Plenty of day trips out of the town as well apparently.
I finally managed to find a car park (in short supply) which just happened to be outside a funeral home, which was at that time mid-way through a 'removal', with a huge line of people slowly making their way in and then out again, saying a final goodbye to some dead dude. I've never seen that before...
A few beers later and we had a quiet night in a hostel in the centre of town.
The next morning, we scraped the snow off the car and headed off towards the famous Ring of Kerry. This is a large peninsula which a road going around it, that in the summer is packed full of tourists on tour buses. However at this time of year it's a lot quieter and we didn't see any buses at all. Leaving Killarney we got lost, which is always a great way of seeing the countryside, and the snow-covered fields and mountains looked great - luckily apart from the snow we had perfectly clear days for most of our trip.
We started driving around the Ring, occasionally taking a quick detour to check out old castles, forts and other ruins.
This one, an old ruin in someone's field was my favourite of the whole trip. I climbed up and had a good look around, amazing that something like this can just be sitting in a field, surrounded by cows who don't care how old it is :)
Not far away we saw another little sign and followed it to a recently-restored stone fort. These things are fairly small forts, made completely of stone blocks, in a circle and would have had people living inside. This one is from a thousand or so years ago.
We kept making our way around the Ring, stopping off every now and again. Had a great lunch part way around (baked crab in a creamy whiskey sauce - lovely!) and just took our time enjoying the scenery.
Eventually we made it around and stopped in at Kenmare for the night. This is a nice little town, with a block of shops/pubs/restaurants and not much else, but still very nice! We found a hostel, went out for a few pints, and again had an early night. In fact we had fairly early nights each night, to get an early start the next day.
The next day we headed further south, to the smaller Beara peninsula. In a way this was a nicer drive, possibly because more of the road was along the coast so we had coast scenery for more of the drive. Again we took a few little lanes to check out some ruins. Followed one blindly for a few kms before getting to a farm gate. So we parked, climbed the fence and eventually found what we were looking for - a small stone circle - 5 stone slabs surrounding a huge slab. This thing really is in the middle of nowhere (there is a letter box on the farmer's driveway, asking for 1euro admission fee - well worth it, hehe). So here's this stone circle, probably thousands of years old, sitting in a hill looking over two gorgeous loughs, with mountains, waterfalls and small woods surrounding it. And to top it off, sheep grazing among the stones... amazing.
After the Beara Peninsula we headed to the most south-western point on Ireland, Mizen Head. Unfortunately being out of season the tourist center was closed, but we still managed to walk down and view the little island and lighthouse from a distance, but it's a shame we didn't get to go down and have a proper look.
With the day wearing on, we headed off and followed the coast heading eastwards, zooming through town after little town. Managed to get a bit lost looking for a few sights that according to our guide book should have been easy to find... however following road-signs in Ireland can sometimes be a matter of luck as we found a few times on this day. (at one point, driving along a straight road, the town we were after started off being 10km away, then 12, then 15, then 2, then we were there...)
Eventually we made it to our next overnight stop, Kinsale. This was once an important port but is now a quite busy tourist town, and I can see why. It's situated on a harbour, has an awesome little town with great pubs and restaurants, and is just a really nice place to walk around and relax in. Of course we didn't have much time to relax, but we did do a few walks around the town, getting great views of the surrounding areas and the harbour.
One of the walks lead us to the King Charles Fort. This is a huge fort with great views of the entrance to the harbour (handy for a fort). It was perfectly built for defending the harbour, however they hadn't really thought about a land attack from behind, and during one of the english civil wars was eventually taken over and left to go to ruin. Now however it's been done up a bit and is great to walk around and check out.
Next we headed towards Cork. However with a few hours of daylight left we decided to squeeze in Blarney. This is home to probably one of Irelands most famous sights - Blarney Castle.
Well known for kissing the Blarney Stone, it is also a great castle to explore. Complete with dungeons, murder-hole, ancient druidic stone relics and yes the Blarney Stone. We did what all good tourists do and lay down, leaning backwards to kiss the stone and pick up whatever diseases the old english woman before me had...
So we made our way into Cork City and again found a hostel for the night. We walked around a bit, went out for a few pints, but town was pretty quiet and we ended up going to see a movie. Saved us from getting drunk anyway...
More walking around the next morning, we saw a few cathedrals, went to the City Gaol and even found a Butter Museum (seriously), which was something a bit different... butter museum... wow.
On again, this time to Midleton, home to Jamieson Whiskey. No good touring Ireland without visiting a distillery! We'd already been to the Jamieson distillery in Dublin but why not take another look. And some more tasting, yum :)
Next stop - Cobh (irish spelling for Cove), famous as the port where hundreds of thousands of desperate Irish people emigrated to Australia and the US during the famine in the 1800s. Also was the last place that the Titanic stopped before running into a cube of ice.
Other than that, not much to see. It's also situated on a harbour, but there are big factories on the other side that spoil the view a bit.
We couldn't find any hostels in town (it's not that big) and so ended up in a B&B, which was nice for our final night of travel. Private bathroom, heating,views of the town and a TV - nice.
The next morning we went to an exhibition on the emigration and titanic stuff that i mentioned before, which was quite interesting and well done, then it was time to head off again. Last day of our trip and we had a lot to do...
Heading north now we came to one of my highlights of the trip, Cashel. This town is all about one thing, the Rock of Cashel.
A castle, round tower and cathedral all built on a natural mountain of rock, it is an amazing place. Unfortunately some of it is being renovated so we couldn't see it all, however it was still awesome walking around and taking it all in, with great views of the surrounding countryside as well.
Almost finished now and time was running out but we decided to head to Kilkenny and have a quick look around. Despite reading that the castle would be closed we went to have a look anyway and found it open and running the last tour of the day. Quite interesting to walk around and listen to some of the history and a nice way to finish our trip.
A few hours driving back roads and we arrived safely back in Galway. 1200kms, quite a few pints of beer and a few weeks of wages. All well worth it.
