The circle is not quite what I expect. Certainly quiet, and demanding of respect, but the stones are less "stunning" than the standing stones at Stonehenge. It is still a remarkable place. I jog back, again the long way, taking a little detour to visit a beautiful old church along the way. It is really drizzling, and getting near time for breakfast, so I head back.
0830 GMT - After a nice shower we all head to the dining room. They apparently do not have a high chair, even though we had requested one. The other guests in the dining room are SO quiet that Amy starts to get annoyed, since I feel obligated to keep reminding Eamon to keep his volume down, despite this being a clearly lost cause. Finally, Eamon finishes, so I take him back to the room for a cartoon and rejoin Amy and Connor. Feeding Connor without a high chair for him to have control over his own food proves to be quite the challenge, and he eats little.
1000 GMT - I decide to drive since we are going to do the Ring of Kerry today and it is Amy's other big thing (besides the Aran Islands visit which never happened). I am determined to make sure that she gets the opportunity to enjoy this drive. We drop off our huge load of dirty laundry at the cleaners we pass on the way out of town. For 14 euro they will wash dry and fold all our laundry by 1700. We decide this is a vacation must! The price of a lunch to get our whole day to have fun is definitely worth it.
I plot a path and give the map to Amy. We reach the Ring of Kerry and have to decide to go left or right...Amy can't decide so I just head left. I then take a sudden right to take a "scenic" route I saw on the map.
<DANGER! DANGER!>
This ends up being a VERY steep, VERY narrow set of switch backs, and we end at a fork with no signs. The fork is NOT on the map. I make a guess, and we are driving down a one lane road through farmland, with nothing in sight but rocks, greenery and sheep. We begin to fear that we are hopelessly lost when we notice that the sheep around us are rather startled and nervous by the presence of our car. None of the sheep we have encountered anywhere else have even acknowledged our presence.. We spook a sheep that is on the side of the road, on OUR side of the fence, and the poor thing begins a manic race to get away from us. The dim witted creature can't figure out what to do and just keeps running down the road. It tries to get through the fence in a few places but fails and we have to keep slowing down so as to avoid hitting it. We are sure the sheep is going to give itself heart failure if it keeps this up. I have no idea how to do CPR on a sheep. Finally though, it finds a widened spot on the side of the road and tries to hide behind a small rock as we pass it by. Amy decides that we are on the REAL Road to Nowhere but I refuse to turn around. A farmer in his truck comes barreling up the road at about 90mph, and after we swerve to avoid the head on collision, I roll down my window and ask him how to get back on the main road. He tells me we are headed in the right direction, to just keep going. Amy is satisfied and we head on. Soon we see asphalt road ahead. The question now is which way do we go? We decide to go right and end up in town on our map. I was actually on the road I meant to be on, but had no
idea it would take an hour to drive it! Amy is panicky that she is not going to get to see the ring, but we stop in town for a toilet break and to buy some snacks and head back. Rather than drive back up the gap we decide to take the inviting little "scenic" route that cuts right to where we want to start our Ring trip. We drive back and forth past it arguing until finally we decide that this MUST be the road.
<DANGER! DANGER!>
1300 GMT - Ok. The drive was quite lovely, but rather short, winding and narrow. We stop at the top of the Ballaghbeama Gap. It is a stunning view with misty fog rolling below and rain whipping in the wind on our faces.
There is a nice map and we pick our route from it, unfortunately none of the roads on that map are on the map we can actually bring with us. We make a guess at another unexpected fork. After driving MUCH longer than we should have, we realize that we took the wrong turn, and are now halfway down the peninsula, far west of where we wanted to start. Amy is in tears, I have pretty much ruined the day for her, and we have no time in our schedule to do this again. We do, at least, know how to get back on the Ring, now. As we are driving we pass an empty pasture with a single large standing stone in it.
We stop to admire it then head on our way. Finally, we are on the Ring! Unfortunately, for quite some time it is rather disappointing. It is very overcast, and most of our trip is through towns. We take a detour and Amy and Eamon explore a beach.
That little speck in the center is Eamon playing in the sand. He gets SO wet and sandy that we have to undress him and pull clean clothes out of the suitcases to dress him in.
1500 GMT- The views get better and better as the drive continues, but we wish that we had a clear sunny day to see them in. We do not have ANY tour buses to avoid on this trip though, and in the summer we have read that they are a numerous menace. We pass the "only" beach cafe in Ireland (according to its sign) and stop to check out their little sandbox.
Amy is mostly satisfied, but she makes it CLEAR to me that I made her miss the best part of the drive through my driving foolishness. I am thoroughly chagrined. By 4:30 PM, we still aren't back, and Connor starts up his dusk tirade and carries it through for the next twenty minutes until we pull him from the car. Before that can happen, we pick up the laundry from the cleaners and then stop at a restaurant nearby for some dinner.
1830 GMT - Dinner was nice, though Eamon was a wee bit difficult. We head back to the B&B for baths (ok, not really). Since there is only a shower, Connor decides to make the whole bathroom a tub through his wild splashing. It is time to rest up for our trip to Cork in the morning.
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