Monday Dingle

Aboard the bus at 10 AM after breakfast and after dropping off laundry at the desk. Laundry will be done and delivered to our room by 6, but we’ll be out until 9 PM. Headed for Dingle peninsula and the Blasket Islands Heritage Center. Dingle and environs are tourist holiday and beach locations. A little cool at this time, so the biggest beach at Inch seems kinda deserted.

Out here the roads are mighty narrow, but Paul the bus driver is intrepid. Some of the roads are literally carved out of the cliffs with a couple hundred feet drop to the left down to the rocks and the surf — and the bus is driving on the left side of the road, and we’re sitting on the left side of the bus.

We enter the village of Dingle, stop, and everyone out for shopping, photos, ice cream, soup, coffee, a pint, a toilet visit, or whatever else moves you. Ice cream at Murphy’s of Dingle is especially recommended. Don’t eat too much, though, as we’ll be visiting a pub later for the best fish and chips.

Murphy’s is found and proves tasty. Paula gets two scoops, Dingle Sea Salt and Apple Balsamic. James gets Honey Caramel and Apple Balsamic. No pictures, just memories.

There are other colorful shops and buildings.

Other shops provide other photographic and retail therapy opportunities, and we enter a pub for wine and a pint of cider.

Back to the bus, where we are joined by Michael Moore (not related), who will guide us out to the peninsula tip and the Blasket Center. On the way, the bus stops at Cashel Murphy, a 3,000 year old house cluster and stone fort.

We are welcome to wander and even descend into the sous-terrain. This is a tunnel about 22 feet and turn left into a 15 foot circular room, no lights, take your own.

To get in, you step down, and back into the tunnel. We are told that the head family could use this to hide and to maintain an advantage if any raiders tried to follow them in. 7 tour members take the challenge.

On to the Blasket Islands Heritage Center. The Blaskets are a set of several islands, inhabited until 1953 by farmer and fishing families. Population declined due to emigration to the mainland and other countries, until the government evacuated the mosty elderly or disabled residents. The Center memorializes the history, life, and culture of the islands in murals sculpture and movies, and our local guide shepherds us around the Center.

The bus continues around the ring road at the west end of Dingle, and the guide points out where David Lean and company spent a long time building sets and filming Ryan’s Daughter in 1970. They were hoping to be hit by a good Atlantic storm for some of the scenes, but it didn’t happen, so they had to move those scenes to South Africa.

As we pass through the nearby village church, our guide challenges us to guess the age of a standing stone with a Maltese cross caved in the face. Turns out it’s a prop left over from the movie, so about 50 years old. Nobody could get a picture.