Gale on the Dingle Peninsula...

Stunning coatline near Slee Head.

Less known, or so we thought, than the Ring of Kerry is a similar ring drive around the Dingle Peninsula. It's just one dinosaur's toe to the north of the more famous drive, still in County Kerry. This drive also took us a full day, and we shared the road with lots of other cars whose passengers were of similar mind. It was quite crowded.

Green valley after valley are divided into fenced or hedged paddocks.

An example of a sun room conservatory popular to catch the sun but fend off the wind.

If we thought the weather was bad for the other drive, it was worse for this one! We had patches of heavy rain, and a diabolical wind was blowing off the North Atlantic. We felt this most at Inch Beach, the setting (on a much nicer day) for the movie Ryan's Daughter - cafes and shops in this area feature posters from this 1970 epic romance set in 1916.

A howling gale and vile conditions didn't stop the fun on Inch Beach.

Inch Beach is interesting in that it is really just a sand spit heading 5km into Dingle Bay perpendicularly from the Dingle Peninsula. East of the spit is protected, west of the spit is exposed to Atlantic weather. Cars are allowed to drive on Inch Beach - we wonder at the predilection for people to drive on beaches? Much of the main Inch Beach car park is actually on the sand.

Wanting to drive on a beach? They must be Queenslanders!

The drive route on this peninsula is rather like a figure eight, with the cross-over in the town of Dingle. All Irish villages weem to suffer from traffic woes in narrow streets never intended for motorised vehicles, but Dingle must be one of the worst. These poor towns, utterly clogged with tourists driving through and locals trying to go about their business, everyone looking for parking spaces. It's quite a mess. By following signs, we found a spot something less than a km out of town in a new carpark that wasn't on the maps yet! But no-one wants to walk that distance - it was quite empty.

Colorful fishing boats at rest in Dingle Harbour.

One highlight of the Dingle Peninsula is the area around Slea Head. Out here, you can see offshore Great Blasket Island. Boats will take you to the island, but on this day, they weren't game, conditions were just too rough. The pier for these boats is down a cliff via a steep concreted path - we wondered why it ws ever built in such a treacherous location. The ferry wasn't hiding there - it obviously retreats to a safer harbour in bad weather.

Well secured ticket office for the Blasket Islands ferry. Necessary! A gale was blowing.

A water soaked lens blurs this image of the path down to the Blasket Islands ferry.

A sign out here reminded us that this spot in County Kerry is the western extremity of Europe!

Houses facing the sea and the view in Ballynahara.

Beehive construction techniques in this restaurant allows a stone roof as well as walls.

Fahan in this westernmost part of Ireland is also home to many beehive huts and ringforts. Some enterprising land owners change several euro for you to have a look at them, others you can see for nothing, others totally unheralded are hemmed in by newer stone fences and buildings and some are quite overgrown. A beehive hut (more properly known as a clochan) are stone shelters without mortar but cleverly assembled with very thick walls using a technique called corbellingso that they can be fully enclosed, even at the top. Lucky this is not an earthquake prone region! They were built from as early as the 8th Century, many much more recently. We saw some clochans enclosed in a stone ringfort to form a tiny village.

Beehive houses overlooking Dingle Bay enclosed in a ringfort. The one on the right is fully roofed.

A more modern beehive construction hemmed in with other structures and even a lightpole!

Ancient and modern stone construction is contained within this scene, even a beehive.

There are some historical famine cottages in Fahan. Houses where poor farmers and their families lived and died have special significance to the Irish. The mass starvation during the an Gorta Mór in the 1840's killed off a million people and caused another million to emigrate. Potatoes are a major dietary component here - one meal we had featured roast, mashed and fried varieties!

Coastal cliff near Slea Head.

On the way home from Dingle we went over Conor Pass. Warning signs require anything bigger than a car to turn back - the road is really narrow and twisty. At 456m, the Pass is one of the highest in Ireland, and provides spectacular views of glacial lakes and the coast. It was cold up there, only 11C on the Volvo's instrument panel, on a day of bad weather anyway. Then we came back to Killarney via Tralee.

Glacial lakes as seen from Conor Pass near Dingle.

Waterfall connecting glacial lakes.

Copper roof characterises this church in Ballyferriter.