Take a water bog and turn it into a carpark and turn some wasteland next to the old landfill site for Tralee into an attempt at creating a man made artificial wetland centre. According to our guide at the Tralee Bay Wetlands, it was all one royal f**k up! This wasn't the last time he dropped the F bomb either during the 45 minutes that we shared his company, but as a native Dubliner of a certain age, I think it's just part of his standard vocabulary, in the same way we were all "lads" when he wanted our attention.
We had arrived at the wetland centre just after 10am so had some time to explore the site before our Guided Nature Boat Tour. We expected the site to be similar to the London Wetland Centre, maybe on a smaller scale, but as alluded to above it was fully man made with very few creatures deciding to call it home over the last 10 years since it opened. The main viewing tower did provide good views of the surrounding area including the Dingle Peninsula where we'd been staying the night before, but very few wetland inhabitants.
The boat tour took us through the reeds on a circular trip and to keep the kids entertained they were provided with pond dipping nets to investigate the water. The reality was they kept hitting a poor French lady who was also on the trip with us and Amber spent all of her time apologising to her and trying to stop the kids falling into the water rather than listening to the commentary from our guide. It was mainly a tirade of abuse to all those who had made decisions over the years to destroy ecosystems and how together with his colleagues they were attempting to reverse what they could, but in reality setting some new baselines for the future is going to be necessary as too much damage had already been done in some areas.
Whilst his language wasn't ideal for a group with three kids aged 8 and under, he was a very likable guy and it was clear that he had a lot of passion for doing the best possible for the future generations to enjoy.
Unfortunately we were a man down this morning with Matty feeling unwell so he and Petr had stayed in their motorhome whilst we visited the wetland centre. He was asleep when we got back to the vans, so we decided to hit the road and head for Kenmare, whilst Jana and Petr would wait for Matty to wake before taking a more direct route to our rendezvous point for a little later in the day down on the Ring of Kerry.
Kenmare and the surrounding area was somewhere that we'd had a few Juler family holidays when I was a lot younger, so I wanted to stop by to see if it brought back any memories, but before that we stopped off at the Ladies View scenic viewpoint on the Ring of Kerry route to break up the journey. We were quite surprised how easy it was to find a space to park the van and it was good to get out and stretch the legs whilst taking in the view. Sunday will see us retracing the route between Killarney and Kenmare as we complete the full Ring of Kerry loop, so the plan will see us explore the Killarney National Park more on this day.
We had a quick drive through Kenmare and visited a recommended cafe called Bean & Batch that had excellent sausage rolls and, according to the kids, the doughnuts and carrot cake were also very good! We then made our way south towards our next camp site and the beach in Derrynane.
The original plan was to try and let the kids have some time on the beach and in the water at Derrynane. Having read online that all the carparks next to the beach had height restrictions making them out of bounds for our motorhomes, we parked up at the nearby Derrynane House. From here there are several nice walking trails including a 10 minute route down to the beach itself. We had already decided that with Matty still not feeling great and the inclement weather, that we would cancel the idea of bodyboarding but on spotting Jana and Emma near the house we joined them for a walk down to the beach.
As we reached the sand the rain started, and as the kids scrambled over the rocks exploring the rock pools it came down harder and harder until we even curtailed that activity due to the danger of the slippery rocks. We proceeded to walk down the beach getting increasingly wetter and wetter before turning inland and heading back to the house. One of the joys of having the campervan is that we could strip the kids immediately of their wet clothes and supply dry outfits for the 10 minute drive back to our campsite for the night.
Tonight we are staying at Wave Crest Caravan and Camping Park. It is situated on top of the cliffs and we can currently hear the wind and rain howling around outside and the waves crashing down below. Deciding to take a night off from cooking we partook in the takeaway pizzas from the onsite mobile pizzeria trailer, Pompeii Pizza and then hid away in the van playing card games before bedtime.
Blogged by Matt and Amber
