MacsTravel Blog

We came to appreciate the value of a small bus tour in a four wheel drive vehicle with a seasoned and adventurous guide on our day touring the Beara Peninsula.

As the crow flies, we didn’t have far to go between Gougane Barra and the town of Kenmare. On Irish roads, it turned into quite the journey.

We travelled into the Beara Peninsula, the southern most of the major peninsulas along the Wild Atlantic Way, and pulled over to go on a leisurely hike up into the hills.

The pathways were lined with ripe blackberries and we had magnificent views over fields of lilac heather and yellow gorse spotted with sheep looking over the lighthouse on Bere Island and the town of Castletownbere. It was a fresh and sunny day: absolutely perfect for a morning walk in the hills.

Lunch was in the town of Castletownbere and we went into a little pub called MacCarthy’s Bar.

I had read a book by Pete McCarthy named McCarthy’s Bar, about his attempt to visit all the pubs in Ireland named after a McCarthy or MacCarthy. An impossible task as it turns out. One toastie and a seafood chowder later we can say this was a good one.

Castletownbere is a fishing town with one of the biggest fishing fleets in Ireland. It was certainly reflected in the chowder.

Before we left town for our afternoon journey we popped into the supermarket to pick up some fruit. We approached the self checkout and successfully scanned a small bag of apples. We had two loose clementines and looked in vain for a code to enter. No code. We typed in “Clementines”. No luck. “Mandarins”. Nope. “Oranges”? Nope. Desperately, we typed “Satsumas”?

From across the store a voice cried, “Try “Easy Peelers”!”

Success. And logical, I suppose.

The afternoon involved a surreal drive way up into the hills on a shepherd’s track in our 13 seat Mercedes mini bus. It was a crazy drive, during which the intrepid Stevie introduced us to the various permutations and combinations of the Irish word “feck” (“What the feck! This feckin road!” The feckin gate! Watch out for the feckin sheep!” Etc… ) and we were headed up to one of the abandoned copper mines from the 19th century when this area was known as the Copper Coast.

We successfully descended despite the best efforts of numerous sheep to disrupt our journey.

Next was the Healy Pass, a truly spectacular road connecting Cork and Kerry on our way down into the town of Kenmare. The views were incredible.

Kenmare features a marvellous and even magical 3000 year old Bronze Age stone circle. Robin was initially very excited but ultimately disappointed that she wasn’t transported to the fantasy world of the Outlander series.

We decided to have dinner at our hotel, The Coachman, which had good food and great music. We’ve discovered that every Irish bar performer (unless you are exclusively doing trad music), must, by law, include a healthy dose of The Pogues, Irish Rover and Whisky in the Jar, and bewilderingly, Country Road by John Denver, Sweet Caroline (god help us) by Neil Diamond, and Piano Man by Billy Joel. This fellow mixed in a lot of traditional Irish folk songs as well as some John Prine, Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot’s Early Morning Rain, for which we were very grateful. Unfortunately, the request by another group of Canadians in the bar for some Stompin’ Tom was greeted with bewilderment and went unheeded.

Even so, a great day and a great night.