Dingle peninsula

We had an idea of what we wanted to see around Kenmare, however after talking to our amazing B&B hosts, we completely changed our minds and went with their recommendations. 

They gave us instructions to take the “lower road” toward Dingle.  On our first pass, we completely missed the turn-off, so we turned around and slowly approached the junction that Google was directing us toward.  When we arrived at the supposed turn-off, we all looked at each other thinking “uh.. that can’t be right..?!”.  We were staring down at a very narrow “2-way” road (barely 1-car wide), that descended steeply down into the valley with sharp blind and winding turns.  We took a deep breath and started down the road feeling nervous and skeptical.  

It turned out to all be worthwhile as this section of road ended up (by far!) being the highlight of our entire Ireland trip!  The views were so absolutely stunning that we had to stop every 200 meters to admire the incredible scenery and take pictures.  This 20 km stretch of road actually took us about 2 hours to complete!


Here’s a short video to give you an idea of how it felt driving along the narrow valley road: 

After exiting the lower road, we finally made our way to the Dingle peninsula.  We stopped at mile-beach, where Dom got to drive the car on the sand and dip his feet in the chilly water.


We had lunch in Dingle and strolled around the cute town,


then completed the Slea Head loop to soak in more scenery around the tip of the peninsula.


The peninsula roads are super narrow and there are people crazy enough to try to drive here with huge camper caravans!  At one windy cliff area, we got caught in a traffic jam for about 30 minutes because people kept having to get out of their cars to help each other squeeze past the big oncoming campers.


The B&B that we stayed at was called Gaines Country House, and we loved it.  The family made us feel incredibly welcome, they were passionate about the area and hosting visitors, they helped us plan our trip and provided excellent recommendations, and lastly, they served us one of the best B&B breakfasts we’d had in our travels so far.  Jen really loved the home-made Irish soda bread, so they happily gave her their secret family recipe ;)







-- 
Gmail