Trabern

On the road again today. We re-packed the cars in the car park of The Nest and synchronized our planned route to Kylemore Abbey and Garden. We turned left out of the gate and thought that Cathy and Steve were behind us but, no, they turned right and that was the last we saw of them for hours! We returned to the Wild Atlantic Way and made our way along the R336 on a wet and gloomy morning. We had Galway Bay on the left of us and the lake-filled landscape of Connemara on our right. We are quite sure it would have been beautiful on a sunny day! After passing the Connemara Airport we turned northwards towards Scriob (Screeb). Soon after we turned west again onto the R340 looping all the way around Kilkeiran Bay ... read more

I recorded yesterday that our room is small but not HOW small. The room is so small that when we open the door it smacks into the end of the bed at one third open, and we have to walk through it sideways! The room is so small that there is literally nowhere to put two suitcases but being a resourceful couple, we have balanced one suitcase on top of the mini bar fridge and the other on the wide windowsill. Thank goodness for the deep/wide windowsill. The room is so small it has no room for bedside tables. On one side there is a desk which sort of doubles as a bedside table but on the other side there is nowhere to put the phone and the watch on the charger although Bernie has managed ... read more

Another day, another peninsula! Yesterday Brian told us that this south-western part of Ireland is like five fingers made up of the Mizen, Sheep’s Head, Beara, Iveragh (Ring of Kerry) and Dingle Peninsulas. We missed the Sheep’s Head Peninsula as we simply didn’t have time to do it on Sunday after exploring most of the coast between Cork and Mizen Head. After Mizen head we drove across the top of Sheep’s Head Peninsula and into Bantry. Today we headed off to explore the fourth of the five awe-inspiring southern peninsulas of Ireland, Dingle Peninsula. From Portmagee we drove the northern section of the Ring of Kerry along the N70 between Cahirsiveen and Killorglin. Along this section we sighted another 20 coaches taking their passengers on the cookie-cutter tour of the Ring of Kerry. And that’s only ... read more

Last night there was much debate about the best way to move onto the next leg of our journey, the Ring of Kerry. Our itinerary said we would travel from Bantry to Killarney and then complete the southern part of the ring, but we hadn’t worked out the detail beyond that. Google and Apple Maps had us taking some weird route over to the N22 to head north-west to Killarney. It seemed a bit out of our way but at least we wouldn’t drive the road between Killarney and Kenmare twice. This morning, while Bernie was dropping the keys back to reception, we revisited the plan wondering if we would be best to drive directly to Kenmare and then commence the Ring of Kerry drive from there – heading west - and miss the section between ... read more