A day around Dingle Town

On an off-day for the rents, the 4 of us decided to check out the village of Dingle and do another trip that Brid had recommended - Conor Pass and beyond (map here: http://goo.gl/maps/FFDiT). We drove from Annascaul to Dingle, did a short driving tour of Dingle, and then drove up the Pass. At the top, there is an amazing lookout - on one side you can see Dingle, Dingle Bay, and the N Atlantic beyond that; on the other side you can see down onto a series of loughs, Brandon Mtn, and on out to the Sea. SOOO amazingly pretty. We stood there a long time taking it all in, and then Jubin smelled something bad and nosed around a bit only to find a sheep carcass - it had gotten stuck part-way under a fence and died there...yuck! 

View toward Dingle.

Just soaking it all in.

The series of loughs.

The view beyond the loughs down to the Sea - it was low tide so lots of exposed mud flats.

Back into the van and down the other side of the pass we went! The map indicated that the way was not suitable for trucks and caravans, and boy was it not! Twisty, narrow, and steep. But, so cool! We stopped part-way down at a pull off where there was a stream and waterfall to explore. Very pretty. Some other explorers there said that we could hike up to a lake, but the rocks looked pretty treacherous for us carrying Jamie in the backpack, so we decided not to do so. 

Down at the bottom of the crazy road, we went left and went to the end of the road - Brandon Point. This point provided a nice lookout up on a cliff with impressive views, including of birds. Watson and Jamie stayed in the van here, and Jubin and I took turns checking out the view. 

Then, we drove to a beach near Fermoyle - gorgeous. The tide was out, so we walked a lot, saw (and collected) some cool crab shells, and played in the very gentle surf. 

This was the view looking back at Brandon Mtn, the Point to the right.

This beach was so compacted and wide during low tide that there were farmers using it as a road for the tractors (since the actual road was very narrow and twisty)!

At this point, we were getting really hungry, so we drove back to Dingle and had a late lunch/early dinner at a vegetarian cafe (ok, nothing to write home about...can't even remember the name of it) and then wandered the town in search of trip gifts. Matching green Irish cardigan sweater for the boys, Irish music and a mood ring (who remembers those from childhood?) for Watson, and some bread and dessert from a bakery. We headed back to home base in Annascaul feeling sufficiently poor. Great day! We hadn't even done the Ring of Dingle yet, but were feeling like we could safely say that we liked the Dingle Penn better than the famous Kerry one. Oh, and not that we didn't see a LOT of sheep on our trip, but here is a pic documenting their frequent forays into the road:

Obviously taken through the view screen...