The Ring of Kerry 🇮🇪

The Ring of Kerry is a scenic drive around the Iveragh Peninsula in southwest Ireland’s County Kerry.

Muckross House & Abbey

The Muckross House is a 19th century (1839) Victorian mansion that sits on the shores of Muckross Lake. It has extensive grounds and private gardens which we did not tour as we were there too early. The house and grounds were beautiful, especially as it was bordering the national park.

We continued on to the Muckross Abbey. It was founded in 1448 as a Franciscan friary for the Observantine Franciscans. I find it confusing that it’s called an abbey and not a friary but I guess that’s not for me to understand.

The abbey was in amazing shape given its age. It was a cool place to explore with lots of dark cubbies, strangle little rooms and circular stairs leading to high tower rooms. However, the most stand out feature was the yew tree in the center of the courtyard with a cloister. There’s some dispute about the age of this tree but whether it is 350 or 500 years old I think we can agree that it’s seen a lot of history.

Torc Waterfall

Our inability to navigate or properly read road signs (even though they are on the wrong side of the road and start with Gaelic) led us to a hiking trail parking lot. After a short hike we found a beautiful fall and idyllic looking bridge that we “incorrectly” thought was the Torc waterfall. We snapped a lot of pictures but left the place thinking “is that it?”. It wasn’t that impressive and almost no one was there.

Back in the car and back to the main road only to find the real Torc waterfall less that 1/4km up the road.

A little more impressive. We felt a bit foolish but it was an easy introduction to how to read road signs along the way.

The rest of the ring drive afforded us some beautiful views of dense forests, intermixed with pastures of sheep, goats and lamb, and then a beautiful ocean view.

Our original plan was to stop in this tiny village and check out a recommended pub, the Blind Pig. Unfortunately, the entire area had a power cut that wasn’t supposed to be restored for several hours. Instead, we motored on.

We stopped in Waterville for lunch. As we were to learn about Ireland, the weather can turn quickly. It quickly turned cold and windy reminding us that we needed to stay flexible and roll with the punches as they were dealt.

By this time we were closing out the Ring with our last visit near Killarney at the Ross Castle.

The Ross Castle was built in the 15th century and it has an interesting history of ownership transition through multiple families.

Overall, the Ring of Kerry was beautiful and a great introduction to Ireland.