Days 30 - Ring of Kerry, Ireland
Friday 12th September, 2025 - Ring of Kerry, Ireland
Today was our planned drive around the Ring of Kerry. Of course the forecast is for rain ... And rain it did !
After breakfast we were on the road by 9:20. Graeme had previously researched an itinerary online for a day's drive around the Ring, except we were going to do it in reverse.
We started at Killorglin, headed towards Glenbeigh with Rossbeigh Beach being our first stop. It was raining and visibility was poor so we didn't even get out of the car. This had the beginnings of a National Lampoon's holiday ! We continued on, driving straight past Kelly's Beach, through Cahersiveen with narrow cluttered streets and full of tourist buses.
We pushed on to Portmagee, where we sat for a coffee and slice of apple pie while waiting for the rain to subside. We thought it had died down, so we set off and crossed the bridge for Valentia Island and Geokaun Mountain for the best view over the Skellig Islands from the high point. After negotiating a narrow winding road, we got to the entry point and for a mere 8 euros we could have driven right up to the top of the mountain. But as it was raining and gloomy, we decided to give it a miss, turned around and negotiated the same winding road avoiding cyclists and walkers back toward Portmagee.
Just the other side of Portmagee are the Kerry Cliffs, touted as being the best cliffs on the Ring of Kerry. We parked, donned our wet weather jackets, paid our 5 euro each entry ticket and walked up the wet and muddy track to the cliffs. We did get wet, but the cliffs were stunning and amazingly it did stop raining for a brief time while we were there. Well worth the stop !
We continued on our journey around the Ring, through Keel, Bally Skellig and Derrynane Beach, again navigating narrow winding roads and raining most of the time.
By the time we got to Sneem, we did stop for a quick walk, then again at Kenmare which was a very pretty village with interesting shops and in our opinion better than Adare!
This was pretty much the end of the road for the actual ring of Kerry, but we still had to get home which was another 90 minutes drive through the bigger town of Killarney.
We stopped at Milltown for dinner which was at The Larkins pub and treated ourselves to fish and chips and a traditional Irish stew. Amazingly another couple came into the pub and they were from Western Australia so we had a nice chat with them. Later a younger Austrian couple came in and we talked about some of our Austrian travels back in 2017. It was only a ten minute drive back to Leabrook House and sleep. It was a big day out and Tania did a great job of driving through challenging weather and road conditions for most of the day.