It certainly was beautiful, although it was also our first day of continual clouds and drizzle, which makes it difficult to judge against other areas we've already been. Dingle Penninsula is also a lot of where Star Wars: The Last Jedi was filmed, so the entire area is filled with signs in Star Wars font saying things like "The Last Beehive Huts" or "Star Wars: Dunmore Head." We also found some Star Wars figurines standing around in various towns.
We planned to do several hikes, including one potentially up the very tall Brandon Mountain, but ended up cancelling most of them. All the mountain hikes seemed a bit pointless when the cloud line was so low, since we wouldn't have seen anything, and we spent so much time on our first few stops that we ran out of time.
The drive itself was beautiful, with rugged rocky coastline and lots of the stereotypical green fields. And sheep. The photos really don't do it justice - either the beauty of the coastline or the ominous feeling of the mist and drizzle. We stopped at some "beehive huts" - traditional Irish homesteads from 1200 and earlier, with huts shaped like beehives made of rocks - but I didn't take a great picture of them.
This was one of the more nerve wracking drives we've taken so far, so I'm glad we were getting used to Ireland roads by today. Take a look at how much of the road one bus takes up - I'm glad we never had to try to pass one! (Yes - in Ireland that is considered a two-way road.)
We also hiked up Dunmore Head, the westernmost point in Europe. The views were beautiful, but it was WINDY! I tried to take a beautiful panoramic photo - but the wind blew my hand each time I moved the phone to give me a very interesting abstract bit of art. This one shows things a little better!
Finally, we cut our Slea Head drive a bit short so we could spend some more time driving up the Wild Atlantic Way, the longer drive bordering the coast, on our way to Doolin and our next evening.
We went first through Conor Pass, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful and terrifying drives in Ireland, through the highest mountain pass they have. It was a bit harrowing, as we couldn't see 10 feet in front of us on the one land road, but we missed the beauty (and the extra terror of seeing the ground drop off just next to us, thankfully). We made it, although I feel like I can't quite claim the accolades people seem to think you should get when I have no idea what I was supposed to experience except for fog.
We also took a car ferry over the bay to cut out a bit of time, which was a nice break to stretch out legs.
We finally made it to our B&B after a bit over 8 hours of driving, although we had to hike in to check in because a car had tried to move over on the road a bit too much and had tipped off into the ditch - not a nice shallow ditch like home, but one that took of his door and mirror and required a tow truck driver to spend some time hauling him out and driving his car back. I'm glad we haven't run into a similar situation - here's hoping we keep up the track record!
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