Dallying in Dingle

 

Monday 20 May

Another lovely day so we packed up the car early and resumed our journey down the Wild Atlantic Way, bound for the Dingle Peninsula. We'd worked out that sadly it just wasn't going to be possible for us to fit in touring the Ring of Kerry as well before arriving at our next overnight in Cork, so we planned a route to Dingle with a brief pitstop in Tralee (bit dull) but boy, those Kerry landscape views over the Connor Pass did not disappoint - so green, so breathtaking, with some low cloud over the high peaks making it even more dramatic.

Dingle is sooo pretty - a clean and tidy little port, with collections of brightly-coloured houses, shops and bars stretching along the front and up the hill into the town - just gorgeous. 

We wished we'd factored in longer there, but after a wander we ate sandwiches looking out over the harbour and then got back into the car (an added bonus of free parking) to set off for Inch Beach, another recommendation. We were lucky only to have encountered the aftermath of a nasty car smash just outside the town centre, with the wreck blocking the opposite side of the road so that the oncoming traffic was held up by the Garda for far longer than those of us heading out of town.

Inch Beach is a 5km spit of golden sand just outside AnnascaulRyan's Daughter was filmed there, and it's just lovely. We took off our socks and shoes, walked along the shore and had a paddle in the Atlantic and it felt so good - the sea air was so refreshing and balmy, it felt good to be alive - a definite highlight. 

By then it was mid-afternoon and we had to be on our way to Cork, but we had a further pitstop in attractive but very touristy Kilarney where we once again indulged in Murphy's ice cream and Neily bought a souvenir hoodie.

The drive on to Cork was again through beautiful countryside - this time the Kilarney National Park with myriad trees in varying shades of green, red and gold formed the backdrop to a fast quiet N road (equivalent of English A roads, with R for B roads and L for - well, other ones)  that was a great alternative to the monotony of the motorway. We reached our destination - a clean and tidy housing estate called the Classes Lakes outside Ballincollig. a Cork suburb. 

A really great apartment, nicely decorated with all creature comforts, a well-equipped kitchen - and a black bathroom. Every inch of it apart from the toilet paper and the towels was black. Well, with water this soft there ain't no limescale to ruin it. We'd bought food along the way as schlepping out to find a restaurant was the last thing we wanted to do - so it was dinner in, some nice Merlot and a rather disturbing Netflix sci-fi thriller, 3-Body Problem.