We decided to leave the cities behind us and wanted to spend more time in nature. The Beara Peninsula is an excellent place to do so. Next morning when we woke up at Hungry Hill campsite in Adrigole the clouds were hanging low looming over the mountains, but hiking was the plan today!
We drove a bit back the road which we came from yesterday and turned left at Glengariff towards Kenmare, where soon we left the main road and drove through densed forest up into the mountains where the road ended and walking trails took over. The hike we wanted to do was a 20km loop around Barley, Derreenadavonia and Eekenohoolikeagha lakes. In total it should take around 4 hours to do so…The first part passing Barley Lake up onto the first hill went straightforward, but the higher we got, the more we were hiking in the clouds. We passed the twin lakes Derreenadavonia and Eekenohoolikeagha and somehow we had to hike up towards the ridge which would take us to Sugar Loaf Mountain at 627 meters.
Our guidebook told us that the hike up was a trackless way and because of the fog it became even more trackless. At some points we could hardly see more than 50 meters far. We just decided to hike up as long as it goes to find the ridge. If it became impossible to climb any further we would turn around…somehow we found a ridge and by climbing over a newly build fence we surprisingly found a fainted track which we could follow, but the relief did not last long as soon we got lost again…according to our guidebook we had to pass dozens of small lakes and by following those lakes with the phone GPS we were able to find our way back to the car were we got back after 6,5 hours…Not what you call a walk in the park…
We left the Beara Peninsula and drove towards the Ring of Kerry were we happily found a spot on the shores of the Wild Atlantic Ocean Road at Wavecrest campsite in Caherdaniel. The actual plan on the Kerry peninsula was to go to the Skellig Islands, an hour boattrip into the Atlantic Ocean where nature rules and a monastery of early ages can be explored. By checking out the times of departure and not last the price of the tour, the Skelligs were not to be considered anymore…We left the most expensive campsite so far and after a minute of 10 we stopped at Derrynane House Grounds for a wonderful walk along the beach and coastline where we visited a graveyard beautiful located with excellent sea views for its inhabitants.
At Bailean Scelig on the Skelling Ring we had a brief stop for having a coffee break and continued our way passing Portmagee.
It became a tradition having a hot chocolate a day. This time we had ours together with chocolate cake at a roadhouse before we arrived at White Villa Farm camping in the very touristic town of Killarney.
We did not do much further on the day which we thought is allowed during holidays. In the evening we watched WM womens soccer match Germany – Sweden on a small tele in the kitchen.
English
Dutch
French
German
Spanish