Kerry

Last weekend Jess and I went to Paul and Maria's place in Kerry. This was part of our staff trip, which at the moment happens to be just me. We took the train out of Dublin and met up with them, drove for a little over an hour to the Ivereagh Peninsula in the southwest of Ireland. We basically just crashed the night we got there and got up bright and early the next day for a trip out to the Skellig Islands. This is one of two World Heritage sites in Ireland (the other being Newgrange Burial Mounds).

Bright and early, Maria dropped Jess and I off at the harbour and we took a 45 minute ferry out to the Skelligs. The Skelligs are two islands (Skellig Michael and Little Skellig), that dramatically sit off the southwest coast of Kerry. One of the islands is the site of a 1400 year old Celtic monastery, and the other a nesting place for 55,000 gannets. The monastery was founded in 588 and throughout the years was repeatedly attacked by Vikings until later abandoned by the monks for the mainland monastery at Ballinskelligs.

The ferry carried us out for 45 minutes. J and I bolted out of the boat and started our three-hour exploration of the island. It was full of puffins! We climbed the north peak to reach the monastery. On the south peak however, there is a newly discovered cliff which is truly at the edge of the world, where a hermit is presumed to have lived apart from the monastery. (at back in photo)

When we rearched the monastery, we found about five corbeled beehive huts and a tiny chapel which was added later. The view of Little Skelligs was incredible from the peak. J and I eventually made our descent on the precarious guardrail-less stairs and headed back to meet up with Paul and Maria.

They took us for a spin around the countryside. Destination #1: chocolate factory. Sea salt dark chocolate completely rocked my world. We could have sat there for hours taste-testing the chocolates but peeled ourselves away and drove around a bit more. We stopped at an art gallery for a bit and then a village which was abandoned during the famine. There were about 5 stone thatched/tiled houses on a hillside which have since been converted to artists' studios.

The following day we did a bit more driving around and just generally soaking in the beautiful Kerry landscape. Maria kept saying it's like living in a painting. We did a couple other outings on sunday including seeing the 'Tetrapod' footprints which they believe to be the oldest four-legged creature on record. It was strange because what's left of our poor little ancestor was being dumped on by farm runoff - gunk from a pipe. It was interesting, but I'm still skeptical. Felt like a Loch Ness pitch.

We caught our train back to Dublin by a hair and I think that's just about all that's fit for a one-month update.