Return of the Native 2.1 - Part 5 - The Ring of Kerry

Breakfast sorted, we set off on our bus tour of the Ring of Kerry with the very first stop being the Kerry Bog Museum.  Now what would any visit to Ireland be without a bit of bog or in fact a great deal of bog if you can get it and they have plenty of the stuff at the Kerry Bog Museum.  I was reminded of the anarcho-syndicalist commune in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  “Dennis!  There's some lovely filth down 'ere!”

The Kerry Bog Museum

It also had overtones of the long defunct the Old Sydney Town attraction back in its heyday but without the thrill of the hourly convict floggings, just bog, more bog and some rather lovely little bog ponies which performed much the same task in the day as Welsh pit ponies only above ground which had to be a big plus for them.

We had to tear ourselves away from all the bog because we had only just tickled the Ring of Kerry and there was so much more to see like the MacGillycuddy Reeks which I’d have thought meant MacGillycuddy Rocks but apparently reek means hill or mountain in Gaelic so let me just describe them as rocky reeks that were more than a tad on the barren side.  And much like the mountains in Wales, they had an alpine look and feel about them despite not being within coo-ee of an actual alpine landscape.

En route to MacGillycuddy's Reeks

Dingle Bay and the rest of the coastline was picture perfect as was the day.  And last but not least was a stop in the village of Sneem which is on a stream with rocks not reeks.  It was all beginning to make alarming sense to me!

The River Sneem

Next day we were back on the bus and off to Limerick then on to Bunratty Castle and the Cliffs of Moher.  Now what can I tell you but ‘100% Pure Ireland’ to steal a slogan that Little Scotty from Marketing stole from somebody else before he flogged it to Tourism New Zealand then got the bullet from the same!  “Where the bloody hell are you?”  Scotty, you plagiarising bastard?!  Oh that’s right, you got the bullet from Tourism NSW as well.  What option does a failed advertising man have but politics?

The Atlantic Coast

Frank McCourt grew up in Limerick so my late mother would have been absolutely beside herself to visit.  She read each and every one of his books several time over and I still have them all.  In fact my Christmas present to her for a decade or two was either Frank McCourt or Thomas Keneally’s latest novel, each and every one of them sought out from under the Christmas tree and unwrapped by Kevin at least three times before it was presented to Grandma, sometimes with the odd claw mark.  I have sworn on Ruth’s ashes to read Angela’s Ashes when we return home.

That evening saw us settle into our hotel in Galway for the next two nights and enjoy dinner at a proper Irish pub with a couple of recently retired nurses, Raewin and Cheryl from Auckland, and I do mean couple.  Spookily enough, they both worked at Middlemore Hospital which is where Peter’s appendix ended up for pathology analysis after an emergency appendectomy in Tonga 40 years ago.  It was performed by the King’s own doctor, Peter having missed an RAAF medical evacuation flight out of Nuku'alofa whilst working in there with Australian Volunteers Aboard.  Appendicitis was unknown in Tonga at that time but like diabetes and many other Western ailments it’s not unusual these days.  We were told that by the Health Minister over a beer in a pub across the road from Parliament where a cabinet meeting had just been held.  The Prime Minister shouted.

Fale Alea 'o Tonga - Legislative Assembly of Tonga (not actually in Ireland)

We didn’t have to avoid Fred and Wilma that evening because they finally worked out that Peter and I had a legally recognised domestic relationship and were at that point on the verge of sussing the same about Raewin and Cheryl.  That said, given their joint consumption of polyunsaturated fats and their weight they should have both been grateful to have two fellow travellers trained in both CPR and the proper use of defibrillators which were present on all trains and buses throughout the tour.