A substitute guide around the Ring of Kerry

At Killarney I unload my suitcase and look around. I can’t see anybody carrying a sign as Declan promised. Just a stumpy, white-haired woman, a man on a motorbike and two boys with a bag of sweets. I’m reaching for my phone when a tall, grey-haired, mountaineering kind of man in a weathered jacket steps out of a red Citroen. I eye him doubtfully; he looks back warily. We nod at each other, me clutching a list of off-the-beaten-track places while hoping this isn’t where I drop off the deep end, climbing random mountains just because that’s what Declan says Ryan’s good at. 

But half an hour later, Ryan and I have worked out an itinerary, including several stops proposed by Declan and relayed to Ryan by cell phone. Ryan wants to do as much as possible following the coastal Ring of Kerry road anti-clockwise around the Iveragh Peninsula. This will allow him to drop me off midway at my hotel in Portmagee and be home in Killarney for tea. I’m surprised by the directionality of it all — does the anti-clockwise part really matter? — but am grateful to sink back into the car seat, jet-lagged. 

We begin by driving through the market town of Killorglin, site of an annual “Puck Fair” in which a feral goat is caught and named king for a day. This interests me, as Bez the goat is one of the non-human characters in my book, and “Puck Fair” has echoes of the pagan past. But the fair doesn’t begin until August and all there is to see is a bronze statue of a wild goat in the main square. “Puca” is an Irish term meaning spirit, often a malevolent one, and Ireland throngs with place names including the word. But I say none of this to Ryan. Although he is affable and open-hearted, I detect something of the insurance adjuster about him and sit up straighter, imagining he is assessing my hill-climbing potential, possibly for liability purposes.

At my request, we pull in to Rossbeigh Point, a long spit of sand, dunes and pebbles that juts 5 km into Dingle Bay. In Irish mythology, a hero called Oisin gallops out into the waves on a white horse with a fairy woman named Niamh and is taken to Tir na Óg — the Land of Everlasting Youth. When Oisin expresses a desire to return home after what seems to him three years, Niamh tells him not to dismount from his horse because in the land of mortals he has been gone for three hundred years, and all the years will come back to him if his feet touch the ground. Oisin complies — until he comes across a group of men trying to clear a boulder from the pass in the mountains near Killarney. His stirrup breaks as he reaches down to help them and he tumbles to the ground, crumbling into dust. Which is why the pass nearby is known as Bealach Oisin Pass. 

But within three minutes of setting out, Rossbeigh Point’s remoteness from the mainland, the wind and huge grey expanse of sea, and the noise of the churning, rounded pebbles work on our imaginations. It would be a lovely place to be lost for an afternoon. 

But we must push on. I can tell Ryan is dredging up whatever scraps of history he knows, struggling to thread our conversation together, as we leapfrog centuries in either direction of the Iron Age, There is such a gap in the archeological record, the period has been called Ireland’s  ‘lost’ Iron Age.

We are distracted by the unfolding coastline. It is magnificent. Large breakers roll over the teeth-like rocks arming the shore. Headland after headland indents the coast, with the result that there are almost no straight stretches of road. The anti-clockwise traffic recommendation for the Ring of Kerry becomes clear to me: there is simply no room for two cars to be abreast. 

Nor is there anything gentle about the face Ireland presents to the Atlantic. Sea stacks rise up, precariously connected to the mainland by a thread of rock. Ryan points out that many of today’s sea stacks used to be lookouts for Bronze Age chieftains, but erosion has weathered away their connection to the land. We walk to the edge of one headland and peer out over the waves to a lookout. I can just make out a semi-collapsed den of stones. 

“That could have held six to eight men,” Ryan says, “ready to ambush or signal. If I knew you had climbing skills I could rope you over.” 

Water foams over jagged rocks trapped in the narrow inlet fifty feet below us and I can tell it excites Ryan’s imagination. My YA novel boasts few sites as dramatic as this, but perhaps I could write in a hostile, sea-stack ambush? But I don’t have climbing skills, not those kind anyway, and this doesn’t look like a good place to learn.

One of my goals is to imagine the land from the point of view of a sea-weary traveller sixteen centuries ago. Except for erosion, and an entry in the Annals of the Four Masters of a disastrous tidal wave in 804, Irish geology as far as I can tell has remained relatively constant. But the value of a safe harbour has made itself clear. I resolve to look at the coastline as if there were no resort towns, marinas or seaside promenades.

The surprise is that there aren’t any. Well, very few. Rounding the next headland brings Skellig’s Chocolate Company into view. It sits above St. Finan’s Bay, facing out towards the Skelligs. However welcome a stop for tourists on the Ring of Kerry drive, to me it looks out of place — far too modern compared with the farm houses we have passed, which seem to date to a previous era — although a few of the old houses are painted bright pink and stand out like sweets against the rugged hills. 

I gaze out towards the Skelligs, rearing up abruptly from the ocean. They are a forbidding, inspiring sight. Ballinskelligs — from Baile an Sceilg, meaning “homestead of the rocks” — was the small village built on the mainland several centuries after Skellig Michael was established, with the purpose of supplying the monks with basic provisions (and certainly not chocolate!). There is minimal soil and no fresh water on the Skelligs themselves. The monks had to collect water in a cistern, and plant their meagre crops in a mixture of seaweed, sand and bird droppings. 

White foam furls around the base of the rocks. Must I go? It’s generally accepted that monks didn’t settle on Skellig Michael until the sixth century, two centuries later than the monks I am pursuing. While it’s possible my small band stopped there — although there is no easy anchorage — my premise is that they journeyed northwards up the coast, possibly living for a while on the Burren and the adjacent area. If they were searching for their fellow monks, they had distance to cover, rather than removing themselves from the world to settle in an ocean wilderness to pursue a life of prayer. Even today, boats from Portmagee on the mainland set out only when the seas are calm. From what Declan has said in a previous phone call, this occurs, on average, only one day in six.