Ballyferriter, Baile an Fhirtearaigh

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Hi everyone,
Since I last posted here we have been petty busy with our sight seeing around Dingle and Ballyferriter. There is so much to do and see in our immediate neighbourhood, and we haven't been to all of the ancient forts and beaches either. Today we went on a ferry to the Blasket Islands. This is a group of islands 15 minutes by boat from the mainland of Kerry, The largest island was where people lived up until the 1950s when they agreed to abandon the settlement on the island. There have been a number of good books written about the community that lived on the Blasket Islands, one being The Islandman, and another being Peig Sayer's autobiography.
The main island is mostly uninhabited now, although we did see one woman living in a small house and a guy camping on the island. There are sheer cliffs dropping down to the spume and froth below, sheep grazing on the lower slopes at 45 degrees and hundreds of midges that ruin your picnic peace. On the island, I really got a sense of the isolation involved in living there, and how watching the mainland and the dreams that it held, might send you batty. And yet, living an isolated life no doubt appealed to many of the Blasket Islanders. The undeniable fact of all this is that their way of life has gone from us now and we can visit the island, walk the bog tracks, marvel at the scenery and wonder at what it would have been like to discover what tea is for the first time, when tins of tea were washed up on the shore. Read The Islandman.
We also visited the Ring of Kerry and had a beautiful day. The weather shone and we were able to have a picnic beside a castle ruin and even go wading at beautiful Derrynane beach. The Bog Museum was also interesting for the replicas of houses from the 19th century, the Bog Ponies and again the appreciation that people in those days lived lives much tougher than ours.
Alison took loads of photos and I'll enclose some. We had a delightful dinner at Sneem overlooking a river and then because we were running out of time, we took a back road over the mountains. This road took us through some spectacular scenery, really rugged mountains away from people, or if there were houses they were ruins. The road was winding and narrowing, at one point I thought that it might peter out altogether. A goat track that eventually brought us home.
We have also moved house in Ballyferriter, which by the way means place of the ferriters. We are now living down on the flats, in the landscape, or paddocks, a stone's throw from our friend Dougie's house. The house is less grand than the last, but has more modern amenities. Ruby and Lucinda are getting on well with Roisin and Ruby especially loves to play with her, as Roisin is 4. There is a dairy up the road, 8 a side herringbone, and during the day, the friesians are let out into the small paddock across the road from our house, where I can study them and remember the sound of cows pulling at grass, poking their heads under barbed wire to eat prized weeds from the side of the road. The smell of cow shit greets us each morning.
The hedgerows at the moment are a blaze of colour. They are adorned with fuschia (God's tears), but also the orange flame of montbretia and the cream flowers of whitehorn.
Wednesday, we are driving up to Dublin for a couple of days before Alison and the girls fly out to see Sydelle and family in Denmark. I'll be back here alone catching up on some writing. We head up into the north of Ireland on August 12.

Cheers

Brendan

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Photos

Ring of Kerry
Derrynane Beach

Ring of Kerry
Derrynane Beach

Ring of Kerry
Derrynane Beach