Dingle Peninsula

Wednesday, May 13 started off horrible with more lashing rain and extremely windy. However, we were not deterred as we wanted to drive the Slea Head Drive. This is done clockwise as that’s the way the buses go and the roads are extremely narrow. Of course, you had some numpties who decide to go the other way and create chaos and bedlam. It’s a 24 mile loop from Dingle so we needed to drive around 20 minutes to get to the start. We also used the drive through Dingle town to decide on where to stay the night when we had finished as we fancied a meal out and some proper Irish music in a pub.

First stop was Ventry Beach, which was lovely but strangely had an Irish warship anchored in the bay. This was followed by some quite dodgy tourist attractions. Dun Beag Fort had collapsed a few years ago, the Famine Cottages weren’t bad but the Beehive Huts were a rip off.

The Slea Head Drive itself was gorgeous with sweeping vistas and interesting stopping points. One of the highlights was a crab shack where we had a delicious crab sandwich.

Liz waiting patiently for her crab sandwich!

We stopped at the White Cross at Slea Head (no idea why it was there!), Coumeenoole Beach, Dunquin Pier then the Blasket Centre.

The Blasket Islands Experience was fascinating. Only a few miles offshore from Dunquin Pier, the islanders had a very hard life with the last ones leaving the island in 1956. There were no shops or church so they had to row across every Sunday for Mass and their only communication was by post.

Onto Gallarus Oratory, the oldest complete early Christian church in Ireland. It dates back to around 700AD. They aren’t sure precisely when it was built because there aren’t any organic material involved to help with the dating. It’s also still completely waterproof.

We then drove back to Dingle and parked up at the harbour (P4N#50850). Overnight parking wasn’t really allowed but this early in the season, no one seemed to mind so for the princely sum of €3 we were covered until 10.30 the next morning. We had dinner at Benner’s Hotel before finding a couple of bars that had live music. Foxy Johns is part bar, part hardware store!