I had a trip to Germany planned last fall, but had to cancel at the last minute for family-related reasons. United Airlines gave me credit for the flight, and I thought I had a full year to use it, but found out this spring that the year timeline was based on when I bought the Germany airfare rather than the time of the planned trip. With this new time frame, I had to use the credit sooner rather than later, or risk losing it. The logical thing was to re-book the trip to Germany, but as I looked into airfare this spring, the cost was double what I paid last fall. Rather than pay twice as much for the same trip, I decided to search for a new destination that would allow me to use the credit at that cost.
I wanted to get to Europe, and somehow came up with Ireland as my destination … I had never been, and the airfare matched up with my credit almost exactly. So Ireland it is!
I did my usual somewhat obsessive research, where I’m reading travel guides checked out from the library, watching Rick Steves shows on demand, and of course online research. I came up with the following plan:
Fly into Dublin, rent a car, and immediately start driving. Go through the Wicklow Mountains, down through Kilkenny, then to the southern tip to Kinsale. Drive west and start the Ring of Kerry, but plan on splitting it up into two days, which has me go half way through and stay on Valentia Island. Finish the Ring of Kerry, drive the southern edge of the Dingle Peninsula and stay in Dingle. Go on to see Slea Head Drive, Dunmore Head, and end up in Tralee for the night. Then drive through Adare Village and the Rock of Dunamase on my way to Dublin, with my last 2 days in Dublin before flying home.
I was aware that this was a lot of driving, but a lot of the sights I wanted to see throughout the countryside and along the west coast were only accessible by car; it’s not like I had options to take trains, it was car or nothing. So with this in mind, and basically mapping out a circular loop of the country, I planned it so that no single day had more than a 2-3 hours of driving distance, knowing that I would be stopping on a regular basis throughout each day to stop and explore the sights along the way.
Perhaps I should note that when I say a “circular loop of the country,” I’m talking about the Republic of Ireland, as my trip this time did not include any part of Northern Ireland. And if you want to get technical, I guess it wasn’t a full loop of the country, but rather the lower part. Define it however you like, here’s a look at my general route.
A couple things to note: in Ireland, the steering wheel is on the right side of the car, and one drives on the left side of the road. I had a little concern as to whether I’d have any issues with driving somewhere completely new with these changes in orientation, but sometimes I just had to remind myself each time I got in the car: “left side.” It wasn’t a big deal at all, I got used to it pretty quickly, although there were still times when I’d pull out of a parking lot and have to remind myself “left side.”
Starting my trip with driving was a quick and immediate introduction to the beauty of the Irish countryside. The picture at the top of the post is a view of the Wicklow Mountain area south of Dublin, driving along Old Military Road (also known as R115). It’s funny, I had read the following tip in advance of the drive: “you will encounter sheep on the road near the Sally Gap. They have the right of way, and they know it.” I did see free-roaming sheep on this drive, but did not have any specific incidents of them blocking my way.
This was a dramatic way to start my trip, and I was amazed that I encountered almost no one on the roads the first 1-2 hours of my drive. I’m not sure if it was due to the fact that I was driving through the mountains on a Monday morning and therefore people were at work or there were not many other tourists around at that time, but it was quite spectacular to be driving through this landscape with views like the one below and feeling like I had it all to myself.
More coming soon ….