Saturday, 19 May 2018

Beara Peninsula

On Friday, we drove the Ring of Beara, on the Beara peninsula, just south of Kenmare. Our first stop in the morning was Gleninchaquin Park. To get there we had to drive about 15 km on very narrow single track road. We didn't encounter anyone on the drive in, but had a couple close calls on the way out. 

 Gleninchaquin is a family run farm that is also a nature reserve and park with hiking trails. We hiked for an hour, past a waterfall...
 ...and up to a lake.
 There were sheep grazing in all of the areas of the park, so we had to go through many gates and climb over fences and avoid lots of sheep poop.
 We stopped for a snack break beside the "Famine House", a tiny stone house that illustrated conditions in the valley during the potato famine.
Our next stop was the cable car to Dursey Island on the far western end of the peninsula. The cable car is the only one in Ireland, and the only cable car in Europe to cross open sea.
 Image result for dursey island cable car
The cable car was opened in 1969, and didn't really look like it had received any upgrades since then. 
 The island is 1.5 km by 6 km, has 3 tiny towns and a population of about 60. There are no restaurants, shops or pubs.
 We didn't do the whole trail on the island, but walked for a while to check out the scenery, some fishing boats and more sheep.
 The locals also use the cable car as transportation to and from the island. A hiker asked one of the locals on our cable car what to do while on the island and he replied "get some fresh air".
 Jasper was really fascinated by the several broken cars we saw on the island, and insisted on having his picture taken with each of them.
On the cable car ride back, we met some new friends who were travelling with their 2 year old and 4 month old. We ended up in the same park and pub as them in the next town over, so Jasper got to see his friend again.

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