>Day 3,4, & 5 Touring Ireland in a Green Paddywagon & Dingle Peninsula

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I put myself on a really low-budget 3-day tour around the Ring of Kerry. It’s called Paddywagon Tours, and they drove us in green vans and showed us the sights. They even put us up in youth hostels at night. That proved to be a little more low-budget than I was up for, but the van tour was lots of fun!

The whole reason I took this Paddywagon tour was I wanted to get out to the Dingle Peninsula, which is the furthest west point of Europe. It’s about 5 hours west from Dublin. It’s a microcosm of Ireland: friendly people and peat bogs, colorful villages, music in the pubs, superstitions and ancient churches. Our driver’s commentary was true and entertaining:

the Irish monks were the ones who kept the light of learning alive in the dark ages, “When the Vikings were running around grunting and farting.” and invading everything (including Ireland.) I even crashed a wedding in an ancient stone church.

I really enjoyed riding through the Irish countryside. It’s very green (of course) with rolling hills and fields separated by hedgerows made of red and purple wild fuchsias! I was so amazed to see what I thought were tropical plants growing robustly in this chilly weather. There are many stands of Douglas Fir which are being grown for lumber. It’s foggy and rainy much of the time, but the ocean keeps it from freezing. We actually got some sun, and just a little mist. This is what the Irish call “soft” weather.

The very best thing we did on the trip: we drove along the coast all the way around the peninsula. We got out on “the best beach in the world,” according to our driver. It had wide soft sand, but the wind was whipping and the sky was grey and it was colder than the devil. I took pix of surf shops. I can’t imagine anyone surfing in this cold weather, but they do.

After awhile the driver let us out again, and said to walk around the point. He said he’d park a way down the road and wait for us, but he wouldn’t tell us how far it would be. We got out and walked about a mile before we found him. It was glorious! It was windy and spots of sun came through. You could see the islands off shore, which are no longer inhabited. We got to walk around the furthest point in Europe!

We stopped for awhile at Blarney Castle. It’s a lovely shell of itself. As you can see, I did indeed kiss the Blarney stone. It’s quite the process, because it’s in the top of the castle, and you have to lean over backwards and upside down to get your face anywhere near the inaccessable spot!