West Cork

Sunday morning we had breakfast at our hotel in Glengarriff and then set out to tour the Beara Peninsula. Unfortunately, we had finally lost our good weather, so it was a little overcast as we crossed the Healy Pass, but we still got some nice pictures. The top picture is the winding road we had driven up; next is a view at the crest, looking into beautiful Co. Kerry! The third one is an example of the contoured hills.

At the west end of the Healy pass we found and toured Derreen Gardens(actually this was in Kerry - part of the west side of the Beara is in Kerry), a vast woodland. We then continued down the peninsula, but the rain got the better of us and we decided to head back to Kerry. We stopped for lunch in a pub in Castletowne Bere - had a choice of 3 pubs and happened to choose this one. They had big signs about this book, and Mary and I had both read it - we thought it was the actual pub picture, but you'll notice the spelling is different. But it is definitely one of the pubs he included in his tour! It looks the same except we didn't have a dog or a nun.







As we drove back to Kerry (another pretty pass, the Caha, with great tunnels - but no pictures) we found a great heritage park with an ancient stone circle, a famine cottage, and other excavated ruins. Dana and Mary toured it (I rested!) and found it very interesting. As we left, we had a very friendly little donkey! We stopped briefly in Kenmare and headed home - a great 4 day trip!