Mixed emotions about how today went. It started out pretty great! I went to a restaurant called Emilie’s in Glenbeigh to start my loop on the Ring of Kerry. I (of course) had a scone and tea. This was my first triangle shaped scone here, it was delicious, but I prefer the round ones- they’re easier to eat (also they didn’t have cream so that was slightly disappointing). After breakfast I started my Ring of Kerry adventure. I had read varying opinions on the best direction to tackle the Ring of Kerry. In some of the travel books I read they recommended going clockwise because the buses go counterclockwise so you’d be less likely to encounter large groups at the attractions, but I also read a blog that said you should go counterclockwise so you didn’t have to worry about oncoming buses on the narrow roads. I decided to go with safety and go counterclockwise (the irony of this will come into play later on). I had mapped out some places that I wanted to visit the night before so I started going down my list. Then I went to a beach called Rossbeigh Strand and got some good pictures (even though it was, of course, raining).

After the beach I stopped briefly at the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Park. Daniel O’Connell (aka The Liberator) was the leader of the Irish Catholic majority in the 19th Century. His mobilization of Catholic Ireland, down to the poorest class of tenant farmers, secured the final installment of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and allowed him to take a seat in Parliament in the United Kingdom. The park was very cute and next to beautiful river and an old church.

My next stop was one of (in my opinion) the cooler things on the Ring of Kerry, a Ring Stone Fort. I stopped at a few of these on my journey, these and the castle/abbey ruins have been some of my favorite things in Ireland. It’s just so crazy to think that these structures are older than the whole of our country. There were stairs built into the walls and you could climb to the top if you were brave enough, unfortunately the walls in this one were too high for me so I didn’t climb to the top this time, but I did climb up a few steps to snap some photos. The nice thing about the rain and the cold (and probably the fact that I’m here in October) is that nothing has really been too crowded. I passed a couple on my way to this fort but when I got there I had the whole place to myself!

As I was walking to my car I noticed there was another stone fort so I walked over to check it out. It was a bit more of a hike than I thought it would be, but it was well worth it! There was a family there when I got there, but they were on their way out, so it was just me and the sheep! This one was a little shorter and I was feeling a little more brave, so I climbed up to the top and walked around the whole outer ring.

After the stone forts I took a detour from the Ring of Kerry to go to Valentia Island (I had read about it on another travel blog and some of the stuff there seemed worth checking out). There are two ways to get to Valentia Island, the Ferry at Reenard Point, and a bridge in Portmagee. Pro tip: the ferry doesn’t run in October. I found this out the hard way, by driving to the ferry stop and waiting for a few minutes (with the wind blowing so hard I thought I might fall off the dock) and then turned to Google and found out that the ferry only runs to the end of September. So I re-routed my map and headed to Portmagee to cross the bridge. The island was very nice, but a lot of things were closed due to the weather, including the Lighthouse which was my first planned stop. So I drove around, found a few spots to take pictures- including an old church and cemetery, another beach, and the Tetrapod trackway. The Tetrapod trackway was a bit of a hike down a very large hill, but the views of the ocean were definitely worth it.

By this point I was pretty famished, so I hoped back on the Ring and stopped in a town called Waterville at a restaurant called Dooleys. I had a burger and chips (the french fry kind, not the crisps kind. It was very good. I had a lot more stops planned so I got back on the road and headed towards another stone fort- the Loher Stone Fort. This is where the not so great part of the day- and the aforementioned irony- starts. I was driving down the road to try to get to the Loher Stone Fort, and the road started to narrow, and a bus (city bus, not the tour buses I was trying to avoid) was coming towards me, and since the road narrowed the bus was partially in my lane, so I moved over a smidge to avoid hitting the bus and naturally ended up hitting a rock *facepalm* I heard a popping sound and I could tell my tire was definitely down for the count. Of course another disadvantage to the narrow roads is there was nowhere to pull off, so I had to drive down the road aways before I could find a spot to pull off, and of course my place of refuge ended up being the turn off for the Loher Stone Fort. Thankfully I paid extra for the roadside assistance so I called the rental company and they said they’d get someone to me within the hour… just over an hour later the guy finally finds me, they told me I would have to pay for the tire and work out a refund with the rental company later (stupid policy- but I had no alternative, so I agreed).

Apparently he wasn’t expecting the tire to be so bad, so he had to take it back to his shop to get a new one and put it on the wheel, he told me he’d be back in half an hour, so there I sat, losing daylight. When he finally got back I found out the cost (200 euro- ouch… hopefully they’ll actually refund me…) and of course their credit card machine wasn’t charged and they didn’t have service, so we drove down to Waterville to hopefully have service and a charge by the time we got there- spoiler, it was not charged- so he fiddled with the machine for about 10 minutes and finally got it working and I was finally mobile again. Unfortunately by now it was pretty dark so I decided to pick up my Ring of Kerry adventure tomorrow and head back to my AirBnB. Unfortunately I would later find out that the spot where I was is one of the best places for stargazing in the world, so I should’ve just hung out for a bit longer to see the stars. But also I wasn’t looking forward to the narrow roads driving back in the dark, so better safe than sorry I guess.

Things definitely could’ve been much worse, and according to the tire guy it was impressive that I’ve been driving in Ireland for two weeks and this was my first flat- I have been paying more attention to tire shops (aka tyre shops here) since my flat and I’ve noticed that they are everywhere, there are almost more tire shops than bars, and that’s saying something! While it’s nice to know that it’s a common thing, I hope it’s the only time I have to deal with that on this trip! I did have my faith in humanity restored a little bit, five different people stopped to check on me while I was waiting for the tire guy, including two that got out of their cars in the rain to run up to my window to ask if I was ok. I made it back to the AirBnB without further incident, there was a warning light on my car that said to inflate my tyre and init. – wasn’t sure what that meant, but I decided to ignore it and go to a tire shop tomorrow if the light was still on.