The Ham Nomads

01 Jun 2014. <IE> Kerry Ring, Co. Kerry —

Today promised to be a fun day. The BikeFest that's been on in town all weekend is having a parade through town at 11am. We planned to find a good vantage point, and enjoy the revels! We pulled out of our camping place early, by 9am, because the "Bike Village" was between us and where we wanted to see the show, and we had noticed that traffic was absolute chaos when the bikers had anything going. We went to Macca's and for the first time breakfasted with them — it's not too bad, but just seems to sit there! We then parked off the road about ten minute's walk from the heart of town. Had determined that two viewing points would be about five minutes apart, or less, so we could view the parade from the first, and then duck across to the second for a rerun. It worked like a charm, and we got two good viewpoints of the parade. Great fun! The noise of the exhausts (not to mention a smell to make petrol-heads ecstatic!), the noise of the horns, and the sheer fun of the whole thing. And we think the Gardai at the front and rear of the parade, on their bikes, were having just as much fun!

Anyway, it was all over too soon. Our next plan, because the weather was somewhat threatening, was to start out on the Ring of Kerry, and pull over and call a halt to proceedings if and when the weather got worse. Guess what — it really didn't. We drove out towards Killorgan, but on the way took a detour up to Kate Kearney's Cottage, a pub/restaurant/shop on the way up to the Gap of Dunloe in Macgillycuddy's Reeks, the mountains in the middle of the Ring of Kerry. There's a road right through the Gap, but we didn't feel like more cross-country driving, particularly on steep slopes — and anyway, the clouds were so low that any view would be occluded. Nevertheless, we did run up and down the hill meeting competitors in a bicycle hill-climb event that was going on. Better them than us! Drove round through Killorglin (Cil Orglan) and to the Kerry Bog Village Museum. This is apparently not a bad museum, but mainly intended for tourists — it's a village reconstructing one of the 1850s, during the Great Famine. We decided to just look at it from the outside, and then move on.

Rosbehy Strand

View back to Rosbehy

We drove further, past some spectacular views of Dingle Bay, and went down to Glenbeigh and beyond there to Rossbeigh Beach. This is a magnificent 2-kilometer beach with some surf coming in from the Atlantic. No surf running today, but a fairly stiff onshore breeze, and light showers from time to time. We decided to park, have lunch, and then have a snooze to give the weather a chance to clear. Well, we stayed there till about 5:30 just enjoying the sound of the wind whistling round the van and the occasional rain showers spattering the roof. It cleared, so we carried on. On the way out, Warren gave Susie quite a challenge — a narrow road up the hill with only the drop to the beach on the right. The views were incredible — and we only met one car coming down!

The van on the Ring of Kerry

The stretch of road between here and Kells is incredible. If I say "Great Ocean Road in Victoria" you'll know what I mean. Views to die for! We came down from there to Cahirsiveen (Cathair Saidhbhin), where we've crossed a one-lane bridge across to a peninsula to its north which has a few sites we might check out tomorrow — Leacanabuaile Fort, Cahergal Fort and Ballycarberry Castle. We would be surprised if any of these have been developed, so they could be anything! We've stopped for the night near a GAA Football Field — you can tell by the nets strung behind the goals!

Distance driven — today, 50 miles ( 81 km ); to date, 1,809 miles ( 2,912 km )