Day 10 - Dingle

Dingle Coast

Today we drove the Dingle Loop, which is actually called Slea Head Drive, and we drove it clockwise as per Rick Steves.  It doesn’t appear that this is mandatory but it is the route that the tour busses follow so there are less issues of meeting a tour bus on a narrow land. The drive is much shorter than the Ring of Kerry and dotted with a number of interesting stops and fantastic views of the North Atlantic Ocean. They say it is the westernmost point of continental Europe, but you have to exclude Iceland and I’m not sure if that is correct or not. Nevertheless the coastline is breathtaking.

One of the Famine Cottages

The area is dotted with the remains of earlier civilizations, both prehistoric and more recent. The first set of ruins you come upon are the Famine cottages. The Dingle peninsula was a potato growing part of Ireland and when the famine hit in the 1840s, it was very hard hit. The population of Dingle was reduced by 75 percent in a brief period, both from disease and migration. It left the remains of stone farmhouses which dot the landscape.

Close by the Famine Cottages are the Beehive Huts. These huts are the remainders of an earlier monastic life which disappeared. The huts are best described as stone igloos and no mortar or timbers were used to construct them. They just used the technique of piling stones in a progressively smaller circle until they were able to close the top.

Blasket Islands (off Dingle Peninsula)

From there the drive wraps around the end of the peninsula and provides a view of the Blasket Islands in the distance. They aren’t too far off the coast and they were home to a hardy bunch of settlers until 1953 when the last were evacuated from the island and it was closed to permanent settlement. The Blasket Centre where we stopped did a good job of explaining the history of these people and they had a very informative film.

I should also say at this point that this area of Ireland was the most isolated from the English dominance and hence Irish (Gaelic) is the predominant language. This is no coincidence as the land is very hilly and not very suitable for farming, so many of the Celt descendants where pushed into this area and all along the upper west coast of Ireland.

Gallarus Oratory

We then saw two very old religious structures. First was the Gallarus Oratory. It is a marvel of dry stone construction similar to the beehive huts but also more advanced in technique as it is larger, with four distinct corners and a round window. The stones are all overlapped and tilted outward so that when it rains no water enters the building.  The Oratory was built over 1300 years ago. It was designed, built and used by Christians for centuries but no one really knows the exact history or purpose other than some educated guesswork.

Ancient Sundial

The last site we visited was Kilmalkedar Church. This was an early Christian and later medieval site and is associated with St. Brendan although it is thought to have been founded by St Maolcethair, a local saint. Still on-site is an Alphabet Stone which contains some of the earliest writings of the ancient Irish which mostly appear to be lines carved in the stone. There is also a stone sundial and a stone cross. The sundial is a bit puzzling as it is very cloudy in Ireland. Today, for us, however it was bright and sunny which made the drive very pleasant.