dingle peninsula, ireland

In the morning we caught an early 7:30am bus to Dingle (cool name eh?!). The people at our hostel told us the wrong bus number to take to the main bus station, so the driver just took us as close as he could and we had to really hustle over to the right station. Luckily, as we always do, we made it just in time! We had to transfer in Limerick and Tralee, and altogether the trip took 7.5 hours. There were these guys on the bus that started talking to us, and one that wanted to listen to my ipod. He was so excited that there was country music on it, and he started singing along with it. That was so funny! They also asked us if we wanted to hear the Irish national anthem. We said sure, and they broke out into song. Even though they speak English here, we’ve been having difficulties understanding what people say. They speak so fast, and the accent is so different! There were also some girls from New York that overheard Mike and I talking about Tim Hortons (how we miss it!) and they were like “Did someone say Tim Hortons?” lol.. It’s funny how you hear little snippets of people’s conversations and then jump right in. Like when we were in Munich some guy heard us mention Robson street or something and he was like “Hey are you guys from Vancouver?” Turns out he was the owner of all the Knight and Day restaurants, and told us to come by for a hook up when we get back.

We arrived in Dingle with nowhere to stay, but there was a shuttle van with “Rainbow Hostel” written on it that meets every arriving bus, and luckily that hostel had room. This is also when we met Tim, a guy from Victoria who had the same backpack as Mike. Mike noticed the pack in the luggage storage under the bus as he was putting is own pack in, and he said hmm, I bet there’s someone else from Canada on this bus (because Arc’teryx is a Vancouver company). Sure enough, there was Tim, haha. The Rainbow Hostel was pretty cool. It was a farmhouse that had been turned into a hostel. There was a huge kitchen, with three cats running around and chickens in the yard. Dingle is a reallllly small town. You could probably walk from one side to the other in about 15 minutes. Our hostel was only another 15 minute walk from the main town. Once we got settled we went into town to the tourist info office, and Mike complained that it’s so much harder for him to spot me in a crowd in Ireland because I’m not the only one with red hair here! LoL.. It started raining, so we just went for dinner at Murphy’s Pub and then went back to the hostel.

Our main reason for coming to Dingle was because it was so highly recommended in the Rick Steves Best of Europe guidebook. He had a step by step (48 km!) guided bike tour of the peninsula that we really wanted to do. When we woke up the next morning it was pretty dreary, but we rented the bikes from our hostel and set out anyways. We stopped at the grocery store first though to pick up breakfast and sandwich stuff for lunch. It was just pouring rain for pretty much the first hour, and we debated turning back, but this was the main thing we came here for. We had to do it! We decided to stop in at one of the plentiful pubs, Paddy O’Shea’s, and have a Bailey’s and coffee and try and wait it out. The weather can be pretty crazy here; pouring rain one minute and hot and sunny the next. Luckily it cleared up a bit and we set back out on the road. It wasn’t long before we were soaked again, with water pouring down our faces, and my glasses so fogged I could barely see! Haha.. We realized that it just wouldn’t be a bike trip for us if something didn’t go wrong. We accepted the fact and just kept pedaling away. When we got to the first sight on the list, it actually cleared up and stayed that way for pretty much the rest of the day, and we were actually able to see the beautiful coastline. The trip around the peninsula was the closest we’ve been to home yet. I think it’s the most westerly part of Europe.
The first stop was the remains of an old medieval fortress. I can’t remember the name of it at the moment, but it was neat! There were all sorts of rock structure remains along the way. There were these things called Cochans, which were huts made out of stacked stones resembling beehives, and there were these other ones called ring forts. Ring forts are also called “fairy forts”. They are really really old, and for the longest time were never touched or excavated because of the belief that fairies lived in them. There are still some farmers today that are superstitious about them. There were tales of farmers plowing them in their fields by mistake and then having bad luck.

The road along the Peninsula, Slea Head Drive, was very windy and narrow in some points. At about the halfway point, there was this big tour bus that caused a major traffic jam. This part of the road around the bend happened to be one way, and there was a bit of a pull out that he should have taken to let some of the other oncoming cars pass. He didn’t though, so the oncoming cars all had to slowly reverse along the road to the previous pull out point so the bus could pass. It was quite the sight to see! Luckily we were able to just zip by on our bikes, haha. It was kind of raining off and on again, so we used that as an excuse to stop at a café for some hot chocolate and cake. The cake was amazing! Mike had this strawberry one and I had the chocolate. They were huge, and we could barely finish them.

We set back out, and it started to get really sunny, hot almost! We came to this huge hill that we stopped at to climb up for a little detour. It was sooo cool. There were sheep EVERYWHERE, just roaming about and doing their thing. We were able to get really close to some and get some good pictures. All you could hear were the sheep munching on the grass. The views from the hill were amazing. The whole Dingle Peninsula was sooo beautiful, with the greenest hills and fields you’ve ever seen. It was so peaceful too, just riding along with sheep baaa-ing and cows mooooing at you as you passed.

The last leg of the trip was brutal, it was totally uphill. We walked it, and even that was tough. Luckily when we got to the top it was an easy 3 mile coast all the way back into Dingle Town (lol, I can’t get over that name!). We arrived back just as it was getting dark. Rick Steve’s said the tour would be a demanding three hours, but with the weather, our side trips, and our few stops, it took us more like around 10 hours. It was well worth it though, and one of my favourite things we’ve done so far! Back at the hostel we ate our picnic lunch for dinner. We were too full from our two stops to even bother eating it as a lunch..

The next day was meant just to be a relaxing one. We went into town and also did the pitch and putt golf course. At one of the holes I got stuck in the sandtrap, and it took me FOREVER to get my ball out.. grrr.. In the evening we had some major planning to do, because we were leaving in the morning and didn't even know where we were going! We decided that we would take a bus all the way up to Belfast, even though it meant we would spend the whole day travelling. That was the only thing about Dingle, it was waaay on the west coast, which meant it would be a long ride no matter where we wanted to go from there. Once we were done with that (a few frustrating hours later), we met Tim and another guy Morgan at one of the pubs in town. It was or first time going to a proper Irish pub at night, and they had the music going and everything; it was great! So lively.. there were people dancing as well. We were pretty tired, but we couldn't leave Ireland without going to a pub with Irish music at least once!The walk back to the hostel seemed to take forever in the dark, but it was beautiful.. the sky was actually clear and just filled with stars..