After a good night's sleep at our wild camping site near Glenbeigh, today we continued around the Ring of Kerry, including a second trip along the Killarney to Kenmare section that we'd driven on Friday, to get us to the Beara Peninsula for the next part of our adventure.
Our first stopping point was Kate Kearney's Cottage for the walk to see the Gap of Dunloe. There are a few vantage points, but we decided that the Wishing Bridge would be far enough to walk with a few other things on the itinerary for the day. The view that Forrest and myself, who walked off ahead of the others, got to see was probably the best as we had some sun. By the time everyone else had arrived there were a few specks of rain in the air and the sun never appeared again before it was time to head back.
Once back in the van we crawled through Killarney for the second time in two days and topped up the diesel. The fuel prices in Ireland seem to vary so much compared to the UK and filling up in the big towns really does make it a lot cheaper. We'd decided that we would stop off at Torc Waterfall and Molls Gap on the way to Kenmare, but only if parking looked clear enough for the van. All three carparks at Torc were chocker-block so we drove past, but there was space to pull in to the Molls Gap carpark so that Amber could take a quick photo before we continued to Kenmare to make our second visit of this holiday to Bean and Batch for fresh sausage rolls and cakes for lunch.
However unlike our previous visit where we took the north bank of Kenmare Bay route out of the bustling town, this time we left along the south bank as we started our exploration of the Beara Peninsula. Our first stop was the most remote that we've taken the vans, to see the Uragh Stone Circles. The stones are located around 5km off the main R571 road, down a road that is single track with many hidden bends. The first part was fine, but soon we started to meet a stream of cars and it took some creative passing techniques to make it all the way to the carpark and we were shortly followed in by Petr and Jana in their van. It was certainly worth the effort as the view from the stones was pretty impressive.
The stones are one of over 100 examples of stone circles in south west Ireland and all consist of between 5 and 17 stones arranged in a circle. They were constructed on ritual and ceremonial sites during the Bronze Age and the line through the entrance and the largest stone are orientated for solar and lunar events.
Next stop, practically at the end of the road from the stones, was to check in at our site for the night, Beara Camping. More on that later. But before we parked up for the night, we wanted to make one last trip for the day to visit Ardgroom. One of Paloma's old teachers from school, once he was aware of our trip, had recommended a visit to the small village where his wife was originally from to visit the pub and also Glenbeg Lough. The Guinness (proper for Amber and 0.0 for me) tasted good and the views at the Lough were lovely and it was a perfect place to eat some ice creams that we'd bought from the local Mace.
Back in the van we re-traced our route back to Beara Camping and parked up on the second of the two pitches that we'd been allocated. Petr was already parked up as instructed and due to the length of our van at 7.4m, we decided that it would be best to park at a bit of an angle so not to block the roadway through to the other pitches. This was all fine until just after dinner the owner of the site rather abruptly told us that we had to move to make space for another van to fit in, the other option would be to leave (not possible as I'd had a real Guinness by then with dinner). To cut a long story short this also required Petr to move his van, which once in "living" mode is a lot of hassle for any motorhome. We can only assume that the equivalent 3m rule as set out in law for a UK site to avoid the potential spread of fire doesn't exist in Ireland, or more likely, just simply isn't adhered to here as our vans are now not even close to being that distance apart.
Whilst this site isn't going to be one that any of the adults would recommend, the kids had a great time playing with an ever increasing group of similarly aged children and we went with one other family as a big group to see the sunset at Coornagillagh Beach, although with a few clouds and poor time keeping, we didn't really get to see it! Being late did have some benefit as the kids were very excited to see bats whizzing around our heads on the walk back to our campsite.
Blogged by Matt
