Ireland day 11 - Wednesday 15th June

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Today greeted us with a blue sky and sunshine!

As we’d been in Limerick overnight, we wrote one:

Travel buddies, Susan and Bee

Flew to Dublin citeee

The picked up a car

And drove very far

Around Ireland – it’s very priteee!

We packed up Sherri and headed just south of west to the Dingle Peninsula. This area is one of Susan’s ‘must dos’ and she’d done a lot more pre-trip research than me, so I was looking forward to it.

The journey skirted round the bottom of Tralee, a great name place, which always makes me think of singing!

We had a brief stop at Inch Beach, a large sandy beach with a surf school and restaurant. The surf school had a group of young people jumping around in the waves, all in wet suits. I did consider a swim here, but as I would have been in the water alone and there was a fair amount of surf, I decided against it and just had a paddle instead. It was a lovely temperature and I really do want to get in somewhere before we leave! In the water, and as we walked back up the beach, we noticed many Moon Jellyfish and By-the-Wind-Sailors, so although they only give gentle stings and aren’t really harmful to humans I was glad I hadn’t partaken here, and understood why everyone in the water was wearing a wetsuit.

We arrived in Dingle, and found somewhere on the main street to eat. On our post-prandial wander we headed down to the harbour area, discovering some lovely and interesting shops selling art, wool products, award-winning bread, and general Dingle seaside souvenirs. There was also Murphy’s ice cream shop, and I had a cone with one scoop of creamy chocolate and one of Irish brown bread ice cream. Jolly yummy they were!

Susan bought herself a beautiful Aran hooded cardigan as a slightly early birthday present.

We couldn’t check-in to our next Airbnb until after 16:00, so we had plenty of time, and booked a short boat ride to see the cliffs of Dingle. It was a lovely trip, with excellent commentary from a rather lovely young man; neither of us can recall his name. Susan just calls him Cutie-pie! Susan's new cardigan came in useful, keeping her toasty warm on the boat.

As well as some general information about the harbour, light house and cliffs, we learnt about Fungie the bottlenose dolphin who lived in and around the harbour for 37 years from 1983. He was last seen in 2020, and would have been over 40 years old, which Cutie-pie told us is a good age for a dolphin. The town used his presence as a USP, and there’s still some advertising for Fungie tours to be seen.

Facing onto the bay is also the last all Irish boarding school for girls. It’s run by the Sisters of Mercy, and achieves excellent exam results. I’m guessing it’s quite an investment to make for your daughter.

We stopped to chat to a rather rotund donkey standing near the harbour. His owner, 2 dogs and a cat, asleep in a basket, were with him, and we had a super 10 minutes or so interacting with them. The man is quite a character, seemingly making his living from chatting to tourists, giving them carrots to feed to his donkey, and allowing them to take photos. The donkey loved having his head scratched, as did one of the dogs while lying on the donkey’s back. We can’t remember the donkey’s name, but apparently it meant calm, gentleness, kindness, good heart. The donkey was 22 years old, and Susan exclaimed, ‘Wow!’ when the man told us that. A story followed about some angels.

Angel 1 said, ‘How much?’ and he was a Realtor / Estate Agent.

Angel 2 said, ‘How?’ and he was a scientist.

Angel 3 said, ‘Why?’ and he was a philosophist.

We can’t remember what Angel 4 said, but then there was another Angel who said, ‘Wow!’ and he was a mystic. Susan claims not to have any mystic powers, but I guess that’s still to be seen.

We arrived at our home for the night, about 5km outside the town. It’s a funny little space on a smallholding, separated from the main house by a locked door. There’s only a microwave for cooking, so luckily we hadn’t planned a night in. There is however a collection of rubber ducks on the bathroom windowsill.

Once settled, we phoned Sean, the local taxi driver and he delivered us back to the harbour area where most of the restaurants and bars are. We ate rather yummy tapas for dinner, then found a bar with live music and listened to a duet of musicians playing a fiddle and concertina, who were then joined by a third playing a bazouki. This is the same instrument that we didn’t know from Kinvarra; every day’s a school day!

After a couple of drinks we called Sean who delivered us safely home by around 21:00.

Today was around 11500 steps and 7km.

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Comments

[Louise Parslow]

Love the riddle
Live the riddle! Love the donkey!, the small dog looks like Rupert x