Usually, I like to have a knitting theme somewhere within a post on the Knitting Squirrel. But I thought I’d write a few posts to share photographs of our visit to County Kerry and Co Galway. This is the gorgeous day trip we had on the Dingle Peninsula. We enjoyed not only beautiful scenery but also perfect weather! This post is based on my holiday journal.
We left early for our visit to the Dingle Peninsula. We stopped at Inch Beach shortly after we turned onto the peninsula.
It is a beautiful sandy beach with many people surfing or learning to surf. Excellent waves breaking on the shore. After a long walk, we continued towards Dingle.
We parked in Dingle and walked along towards the Tourist Information. It was closed for lunch, so we wandered in and out of a few touristy gift shops.
We stopped to listen to a busker playing traditional music on a tin whistle. I love listening to talented musicians. The music was beautiful, and his two dogs and donkey were adorable.
I couldn’t resist a delicious ice cream from Murphy’s. I had brown bread ice cream, while Neil opted for the honeycomb.
After deciding to follow the Atlantic Way route, our first stop was a short visit to the Celtic & Prehistoric Museum. The exhibits were mainly Scandinavian, which were very interesting, particularly the woolly mammoth skull, which was very large and rather impressive. As with many of the places we visited, the Celtic & Prehistoric Museum has a sense of being one collector’s fantastic collection that is now open to visitors.
“Here you will come face to face with “Milly”, the largest complete Woolly Mammoth skull and tusks in the world, accidentally discovered in a North Sea fishing trawler’s net in 1999.”
We encountered a traffic jam due to roadworks and decided to park and walk down to Dun Beag Fort.
It was relatively small, and we couldn’t walk through all of it as part of the main entrance had been undermined a couple of years ago after part of the rocky cliff below had fallen into the sea. Neil decided to go in to watch the audio-visual, whereas I opted to sit on a wall in the sun in the car park beside the cafe. It was a scorching day! There were a lot of cars on the road, even though it was early in the summer season. But filming was going on for Star Wars on the Dingle Peninsula! Lots of visitors wearing Star Wars t-shirts.
Our next port of call was the Beehive Huts, which were unique and similar to a ring fort in that there was a surrounding outer wall, and the huts were inside.
One beehive hut was fully intact, one without a roof and one at the base of the wall. We strolled around and through all the beehive huts while taking many photos!
The Dingle Peninsula was the place I’d wanted to explore.
When we last visited County Kerry for our honeymoon a long time ago, we had left going to the Dingle Peninsula until the day before we left to go home, so we’d only been able to drive to Dingle and then had to turn back. So I was looking forward to this particular day trip.
You can’t go on a day trip on the Dingle Peninsula or anywhere in the West of Ireland without seeing sheep to photograph! We couldn’t resist!!
We drove around the Dingle Way, stopping to photograph the Blasket Islands from Slea Head.
We aimed to drive the very scenic Slea Head Drive. We were too late to visit the Blasket Island Centre as it was about to close.
The mountains are very barren, and the landscape reminds me very much of Shetland.
Of course, Star Wars is not the first film to be filmed in the West of Ireland. Inch Beach and Dingle Peninsula were both locations in the classic movie Ryan’s Daughter from 1970.
We pulled into the car park for Gallarus Oratory at 6:20 pm and were delighted to find it was still open for visitors until 9:00 pm.
Gallarus Oratory was a beautiful, perfectly preserved early dry stone-built church. The morning light shone through the tiny window at the back.
The evening sun shone through the open doorway and lit up the interior of the small building, which had very thick walls.
We were ravenous by the time we left Gallarus, as it seemed like a very long time since we’d eaten our ice cream in Dingle. We looked at the map and decided to finish the scenic Slea Head Drive. When we returned to Dingle, we thought we’d treat ourselves to fish and chips.
Neil went to order the fish and chips and returned with hake and chips as the cod and haddock (my favourite) were sold out! Have you ever noticed how yummy fish and chips are when you are hungry? Nothing tastes quite as good!
Neil was chatting to a coach driver while he was waiting for the fish and chips, who was telling him that there would be a giant Star Wars party for the ending of their filming on Dingle the next night! We wish!!! But our wonderful day on Dingle was at an end.
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