{i’ll be posting my ireland journal in it’s entirety for the next few days. if you haven’t had a chance to view the images, check that posting out here. i’ll also be posting my polaroid images when i get them scanned into my computer}
“today we drove from youghal to ballinskelligs it was about 5 hours total – ish – but we did take a few fairly long stops. we made the drive from youghal to killarney w/o many problems and stopped in killarney for some food at the supervalumart. on our way out of town, we almost got run over because mom didn’t see the big-ass truck coming round the roundabout. we survived though and stopped just down the road at the torc waterfall.
the waterfall is stunning – just buckets of water cascading down the rocks – and the surrounding forests are gorgeous. they sort of remind me of the disney-looking forests near blarney, but they are a little greener. {ed. note: 8 years ago, when i visited ireland for the first time, my first thought on seeing the forest at blarney castle was that it was fake-looking – hence the disney}
a few km down the road, we stopped to eat our lunch overlooking a lake, and then began to drive along the ring. we stopped a few times – some overlooks – then tried to find the road through the magillycuddy’s reeks. i think we found it, but mom doesn’t, and even if we had, she wasn’t comfortable driving on it. gma was convinced we were lost…
in the end we just stayed on the main road and headed toward ballinskellings. we stopped for some great views over kerry’s coastline before heading down the mtn to [the town]. we checked in and went back out to cahersiveen, where there are two forts.
the guidebook says they are bronze age or older, but the signs at them say they can’t be older than 1000 years. {ed. note: i tried to look them up… no info to be found?}. either way they were incredibly impressive {ed. note: i have sketches… i will scan them in and link them back to here. eventually}. on our way back to portmagee, we found a castle – ballycarbery – and stopped. we – mom and i – crawled under the barbed wire fence to get in, and i was able to climb the existing stone steps up to the second level. it was pretty amazing and the pictures turned out great.
we had dinner in portmagee at the bridge bar and then drove along the mountain road back down to the beach. gma was not thrilled about the road and wondered if there was another one – haha!
we did see two complete rainbows, one of which was a double, and we stopped at the top for some sunset skelligs pictures. i didn’t manage to get up early today, but we have a long drive ahead of us in the morning so i am planning on getting up at 6.”
{ed. note: we actually stopped at another ring fort on this day, one that – for some reason – i didn’t write about. it was lohar fort and we spotted it from the road above and drove down until we could turn off and get to it. all three forts are similar in size and construction}