The Ring of Kerry - too much of a good thing?

One day when we were staying at Knockatee House on the Beara, we drove through Kenmare and to the West to do the Southern part of the Ring of Kerry.

The Ring of Kerry is by far the most popular, well-known ring in SW Ireland (as compared to the Ring of Beara and the Dingle Ring). Perhaps not surprisingly, then, we liked it the least. Certainly, there were some really cool sights to see. But, the Ring of Kerry is by far the biggest of the "Rings" at ~180km total (meaning a much longer drive with more time in the car between sights), is the busiest, and has the worst roads due to all of the huge tour buses traveling around it every year. Although we saw some really great stuff that day while driving about half of the Ring of Kerry, we all agreed that we probably wouldn't go back or recommend it to others (compared to other places in SW ROI). 

Our 1st stop was in the village called Sneem - cute! Beautiful river going through it.
We got scones and coffees, used the public loos, and visited the river bank before moving on.

Our second stop was at a really awesome ring fort - Staigue Fort (http://www.theringofkerry.com/staigue-fort) that was likely built ~300AD. Mom walked about half-way up to the Fort where she had a great view of it and the surrounding scenery while the rest of us explored. SO amazing...we would recommend this sight to others visiting the area!

Yep, still nursing! :)

See how LARGE this fort is? Watson looks teeny!

King of the Mtn!

The amazingly-crafted ceiling of one of the little rooms.

The sheep in Ireland are marked with spray paint - the color and location and shape of the marking
help the farmers keep their sheep straight. First purple ones (Watson and Dad's fav color)!

Baby...

There was a stream by the fort that Watson and Grampa
played race the stick, flower, anything on the ground in.

Third stop was a beach near Castlecove for our picnic lunch and a bit of sand play. It was very pretty there, but there weren't any public bathrooms, so we had to pay buy a beer and ice cream at the pub on the beach. Sounds like a good idea, but we were all pretty annoyed at the lack of facilities and the boys were probably about done for the day at this point (not done yet!).

Cuties...

The scenery along the drive was gorgeous...as we bumped and swerved along!

Next stop - Ballinskelligs or "Baile na Sceilge" (http://www.theringofkerry.com/towns-villages/ballinskelligs). We pulled into the car park for the beach and Watson and I explored the old castle ruins (we called these "random ruins" throughout the trip - ruins not in the tour books, but still super-cool. Think Watson counted about 35 of these during the 2 weeks.).

Then, just down the road was a monastery that Dad and Jubin explored while I nursed Jamie in the van. One of the interesting things about this historical site was the fact that they are still burying people there.

This was our turn-around spot - we had originally planned to go further...the idea was to drive to Portmagee, take the ferry to Valentia Island, but we had underestimated the time required to drive that far, it was already close to supper time, and everyone was getting pretty grumpy and tired. On our way back to Knockatee House, we certainly were jounced around - this is the direction that the tour buses travel in and the road was REALLY bumpy. At one point, I almost hit the ceiling (was in the back seat)! Anyway, we stopped in Sneem again- this time for dinner at Sacre Coeur. The food was good but nothing special. However, we were all happy for a break from the van and the woman who served us brought out a bunch of toys for the boys to play with so we were happy.