So today I took a guided tour with a small group around the entire Dingle Peninsula. It was nice because there were only 4 of us so we were able to stop more often and spend more time at the various lookout points. There was a couple from Poland and the husband was a film maker. He was there scouting out the area to possibly make a film. The other guy was retired and from San Francisco but his daughter lived in Dublin and worked for Wells Fargo. Small world.
The gloriously green Dingle Peninsula is 10 miles wide and 40 miles long. While only a few tiny towns lie west of Dingle, the peninsula is home to over 50,000 sheep (and I think I saw all of them!). The peninsula is really an open-air archaeological museum, dotted with over 2,000 bee hive looking stacked stone huts and settlements dating from the Neolithic Age (roughly 3,000 B.C.).
So I’ll walk thru the pictures explaining each one. The first is one of the bee hive huts. It’s constructed similar to the Newgrange structure I saw outside Dublin where they did not use any mortar but just stacked the stones together. They believe they were used to live in or store supplies in.
Pics 2 and 3 are some of those 50,000 sheep and I got to hold a cute little lamb. Factoid I learned is that it’s considered a lamb up until age one, and from there on it’s a mutton. Hold your ears on this one but he said that if they’re using them for meat, they usually slaughter the lambs at 9 months when the meat is the most tender. So cruel (but gotta love those lamb chops!).
Pic 4 shows how the road just winds tight along the coast all the way around the peninsula with breathtaking views out to sea.
Pic 5 shows the sheer cliffs dropping right down near the road.
Pic 6 shows an island (the far one) they call the “sleeping giant”. If you start at the right, that’s his head and his feet are at the bottom. To me he looks like he’s got a beer belly from drinking all that Guinness!
Pic 7 is the view from the top of Dunmore Head which is literally at the tip of the island and thus the truly most western point in Europe.
Pic 8 is a sign on the gate we had to go thru before hiking up to Dunmore Head showing that they filmed Star Wars: The Last Jedi here.
Pic 9 and 10 are more beautiful scenery along the coastal drive.
Pic 11 shows my dinner tonight. After getting back home, I was hungry for some good old fashion American food so this pub had a special on what in essence was a Thanksgiving Dinner (minus the stuffing). It was really tasty.
Pic 12 shows how I finished my night off… with some more craic and good music at one of the local pubs. It’s cool how they all have live music and most of it’s traditional Irish music.
Well that’s all for now. Happy Thursday!
The Wandering Italian 