Exploring Dingle by Land

(8/6) Monday –

On our first misty morning in Dingle, we set out after breakfast in the cars to do a 23K historical tour of the peninsula along winding roads with beautiful, lush green hills spotted with cows or sheep on one side and amazing cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on the other side.  We’ve seen a lot of wonderful scenery on this trip, but touring around Dingle gave us some of the best sights I’ve ever seen in my life.  Along the tour we visited Dunbeg Fort that dates back to 500BC, Beehive Huts that would have been inhabited from ancient times through 1200 AD,  and the Gallarus Oratory that is shown in the picture below.  All of Ireland is covered in stone, or seems to be, so all of the historical sites we’ve visited have been built using stone and many of them have been constructed in such a way that they’re waterproof, without the use of mortar or any substance like it.   The Irish definitely knew how to construct a long lasting structure.  The different stones are still used today for construction and many of the houses dotting the landscape are made with some amount of stone.  I assume the houses built completely from stone are owned by the wealthier population.

                 Along the tour, we made a few non-historical stops as well. The first was at Luis Mulcahy pottery where Mrs. Dite and I did a little bit of shopping.  The pottery wasn’t really to Brian’s taste, but I found a few small pieces that I liked that are functional and will always bring fond memories of this trip along with a couple of gifts.  After shopping, we headed to a pub for lunch.  The lady who runs the B&B that we’re staying in recommended the pub because one of her cousins is the owner of the pub and a local brewery.  All she had to do was say “brewery” and we were sold.  Lunch was just okay.  After that we continued on to the base of Brandon Mountain where we found Brendan creek.  Brendan was thrilled that there is a creek named after him, so we stopped to relax and take some pictures.  Once again, the scenery didn’t disappoint.

We headed back in to town to our B&B for a little down time before dinner at The Chart House, another place recommended by the owner of the B&B.  This restaurant was a far better suggestion, but on the pricey side.  This was our fancy dinner for the trip and it was so tasty.  Mr. and Mrs. Dite have definitely been spoiling us on this trip.  After dinner, we walked through the small carnival in town (Irish carnies aren’t any different from US carnies) and then worked our way over to Murphy’s pub to listen to some Irish music while enjoying a few pints.  The two men performing in the pub, one playing a banjo and the other playing a guitar, were fantastic.  When they weren’t singing, or asking us to sing along with them, they were doing their own mini comedy act.  It was a nice way to finish the evening.