Killarney to Cashel

We ended in Killarney for the evening with the intent of going to the Ring of Kerry the next day. We really didn’t know what the Ring of Kerry was, but assumed that it was similar to the Cliffs of Moher and in a way it is; the Ring of Kerry is a scenic drive around a peninsula that passes through a few small towns that are stated to be cute, friendly, and touristy. Sounded like a nice day out, but we never did find out as our hostel host for the evening convinced us that going on the drive around the Dingle Bay peninsula along the Slea Head trail was better. The Dingle peninsula is the northernmost of the two peninsulas in Kerry County (the other being the Kerry peninsula).

To do the Dingle Bay loop, with time to stop and “smell the roses” or walk around a bit takes 3-6 hours. From Killarney, Em and I headed to Dingle Town, about an hour north of Killarney. The town is another small fishing village nestled on the Atlantic coast, with an overly friendly tourist office, a smattering of coffee shops and pubs, and some window shopping options.

This is also the town where the whether decided that it was done with the aberrant summer and it was the time for a return of rain. As we left our car and started to walk into the center of town, the heavens opened and we felt true Irish summer. Of course, 10 minutes after we take shelter in a warm coffee shop, the clouds part and the sun appears. Then we received weird looks from everyone as they apparently were smart enough to wait out the 10 minute rainfall and therefore did not look like drowned rats for a good hour or two.

The route around this peninsula takes you along the coastal route and past a few old forts, villages, museums, and churches. We visited a few. We went to the Dunbeg Fort (a promontory fort built during the Iron Age and set on the cliff edge overlooking the ocean), Clochán (dry-stone huts with corbelled roofs as known as “bee hive huts” due to their shape), Inch beach, and a small Celtic Museum run out of a guy’s house (but he did have a very impressive collection of archaeological artifacts and was recognized as an official museum by Ireland).

The entire route was gorgeous and we enjoyed our drive immensely. Upon returning to Killarney it was only midafternoon so we attempted to visit Ross Castle. The castle is another stone Tower house and was home to the O’Donoghue clan and later the Brownes of Killarney.  We never got to go inside as they only had a spot for one more on their tour and no amount of begging would convince them to let both of us go and count it as one person.

Since Ross Castle was a bust, Em and I headed a few miles further into Killarney National Park to visit the Muckross House. They have a working farm there was you can visit, but there was only time left to see the house. The house is really a 65 room Tudor style mansion that was built in 1843 for a single couple. My favorite part of this house is that all of the major rooms are outfitted with an old fashion bell system wherein the masters of the house could pull an artfully concealed string and it would cause a bell in the basement (servants’ area) to ring. There were 22 bells all of different sizes and therefore different tones and so when one rang, a servant could tell what room of the house to respond to.

Outside the house was a very nice set of gardens and the national park. Down the street a bit was the Muckross Abbey, which appeared as if it were straight out of a Tim Burton movie. The abbey is now desolate and abandoned, but one is allowed to wander around. The light fog in the air as we wandered added to the mysterious allure of the place and the giant yew tree growing in the middle of the inner courtyard was just fantastic.

After a nice dinner we headed inland to Cork. Em had booked us a hostel online that was rated as # 1 for the last few years and looked cute and quaint from the photos. It was neither quaint nor #1 in our book. Coming from having worked some cases in the Santa Barbara County Jail, I felt as if I had gone back there to actually spend the night. When you walk in the front door, the hostel (Shelia’s Tourist Hostel) is cute, with a small café/reception area and a large utilitarian internet room, but behind this area the layout gets weird. We were directed to walk up the stairs, past the kitchen and down the hall. Leading off of the main stairwell are rows of doors that I can only assume lead to other rooms giving you the feel that there are hundreds of people behind the walls (and there probably where) instead of the few dozen that you were expecting. The kitchen (which I only glimpsed as I hurried by) scared me with a long row of rusted Bunsen burner type ranges along one counter and a huge table in the middle. It seemed like a high school science room more than a kitchen. The bathroom was a two-toilet-two-shower-co-ed-bathroom for entire floor (about 6 rooms of 6-10 people each). The best though was the actual dorm room. This was a white brick walled, windowless room with six bunk beds forming a U-shape around the perimeter and an open space of maybe 3 X2 feet in the center (hell in jail you have more space than that and you have open bars at one side so the Claustrophobia doesn’t set in). Em and I both agreed that we were only staying the one night (and not the two we’d originally planned).

Cork sprung up from a small monastic settlement in the 6^th century into the third largest city in Ireland. It’s a neat, older city with a lot of history. We only walked around a bit and then headed 6 km outside of town for the real attraction, Blarney Castle and the Blarney Stone. Blarney Castle is a medieval castle that like most in the region was built, destroyed, built again, destroyed again, and so on for many generations. It gets its current name from the 1847 baronial mansion that was built on the site.

It is said that Queen of England Elizabeth I, coined the term “Blarney” in response to Cormac Teige McCarthy’s flowery way with words during negotiations of the takeover of Blarney Castle by the occupying English forces. Cormac himself was the King of Munster, living in the Blarney Castle around the14th century and would artfully talk the Queen out of what she wanted. She is stated to have eventually decried “Enough with your Blarney!”

The Blarney Stone which is high up in the castle wall was rumored to have been created by a witch during the Middle Ages and is said to give the “gift of eloquence” or “gift of gab” to those that kiss it. As such it has a long history of people trudging up the tower steps to lie on the ground, hang partially upside down, and kiss it. Em and I joined this list (although we’re not sure whether we kissed the right rock as the guide kind of tilted you backwards and said “there you go” but there were a few stones to choose from). One thing us and all the people we got to know as we waited in line with agreed on though, was that, the stone might not give us all the gift of a silver tongue for the next 7 years, but it might be a perfect conduit for transmitting herpes. And if Em starts talking even more incessantly and faster for the next 7 years, that’s not my fault.

The castle itself is pretty cool as it is all self-guided and there are areas there that are open to venture into that at other castles you can’t visit. There are dungeons and cave systems under the castle foundations, a poison garden with well written descriptions of what everything plant is capable of, and my favorite, a garden with waterfall and lush foliage surrounding and old series of druid ruins (including a witch’s home and wishing steps). I lost Em in the witch’s garden for an hour or so and almost gave her up as having been lost to the witch as payment for the entrance into her world.

We returned to Cork from our visit to Blarney and went to visit the Cork Goal (jail). We had tried to see this in the morning, but due to being three inches away from being the victims of a car crash (the car in front of us was hit by a person running a stop sign…this seems to be the norm unfortunately as the Irish make a “California Roll” seem like a complete stop with time for a coffee break) we decided to avoid the city for a bit.

The Gaol, known also as Sunday’s Well due to the location in the city that housed it, was open for 100 years (1823 to 1924). The tour through here was similar to the Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin that we saw before. The main differences were that this jail had multiple wings (instead of one main one), there was a period where it was a women’s only prison, the tour included not-very-real-like mannequins representing some of the main characters that were in the jail, and instead of being well known for executing revolutionists and thus inciting Irish passion for freedom, it was known for a famous jail break (42 men escaped, but most were recaptured within a week or two). 

Since Em and I had no urge to stay in jail again ourselves for the evening (aka Shelia’s Tourist Hostel), we headed to Cashel for the night.

Cashel is mainly known because upon the limestone hill at the town of the town is the Rock of Cashel. Old mythology (and the reason Em and I wanted to see the place) states that when Saint Patrick banished the devil, the devil flew over the Devil’s Bit (a mountain 20 miles away), and bit a chunk off. As the devil flew over Cashel, he dropped the bite he’d taken and that Rock became The Rock. There’s another version of the story that I like better in which the devil purposely dropped the rock in an effort to prevent a church from being built. Regardless of the origins of the rock, it became an ideal place for building first a ring fort, later a castle, and finally a church. The Rock of Cashel was also the seat of power for the Kings of Munster for many generations and it is reputed to be the site of the conversion of the King of Munster by Saint Patrick in the 5th century.

After viewing The Rock, we lazily made our way to Kilkenny, our last stop on this adventure.