The tipping point

Let's face it, I just screwed up. I was already to skip the Ring of Kerry, with all of its magnificent scenery and hordes of tour bus, but everyone said, "oh, you have to see the Ring of Kerry," and the only day we could do it was today (Tuesday, I think), so we set out to see an abbreviated version of it.

Gotta say, I get why it's a big deal. There just aren't a lot of great mountain/ocean combos to be seen. We left relatively early and went the opposite way of the tours, deciding to do an abbreviated version. Saw some very wonderful things, but the abbreviated version was still too much, considering how much car time we'd had the day before.

Yes, it's quite grand!

On the way back, I figured we might as well take a peek at Killarney, the main tourist stop in the area. I stupidly assumed there had to be some reason everyone went there. More on that later. Getting there was the real adventure.

So rather than go the regular main scenic route along the mountainside, I decided to take the local road down through the valley. For the first 20 km or so, it was really beautiful, and even though it was slow, at least for me the views and the sheep, which were mostly uncontained and wandering on the roadside were worth it.

Unfortunately, we hit a weird kind of tourist jam-up. Suddenly we started seeing more and more people walking along the side of the road. Then a bunch or horse-drawn carts. For the longest time, we couldn't figure out where they were coming from. We were literally in the middle of nothing.

The road was very narrow, though there were occasional turnouts. Sometimes the horsecarts would let us through, sometimes not. It took what was already kind of long and made it seemingly endless. I even bottomed out the car once, with one wheel going off the pavement and making a nasty scraping sound. No obvious damage though (and hooray for $0 deductible!). We finally got past horsecart central (there actually was such a place, not that it was called that) and were able to drive as normally as is possible under the circumstances. That brought us into the snarl that is Killarney.

I'm not just referring to our facial expressions by the time we left, but the traffic. It's so crowded that you could hardly walk and it was trashy touristy stuff for the most part (not that there aren't some nicer shops). Ugh. That put a really bad taste in our mouth, and the hour or so it took us to get back only made it worse.

I'd have to say that was our low point. Too much car time. Too much Killarney. Fortunately, the town where we chose to stay, Kinsale, is a much smaller place and quite nice. So I'll pick it up there next.