Ireland - Finian's Bay to Dingle

Actually set an alarm today as we knew that is was a longish drive to the next peninsular north of us, the Dingle Peninsular.

Occasional patches of blue sky, occasional sun, we didn't realize how much we had been missing it. This meant that for the first time my camera was actually recording the fabulous greens. They really are amazing. They say there are 40 shades of green here and with the recent rain (it poured yesterday evening) and today's sun they are glistening.

Looking across at the Dingle Peninsular

We had to go in 50km then out 50km to get to Dingle.

Nicola googled and found a quilt shop on the Dingle Peninsular. We actually found it! Some lovely fabrics (Nic bought a bunch of greens) and the owner designs and sells the patterns and kits. If I get permission from her to post pictures of them , I will.

We stopped at Inch Beach which spans this estuary.

It is huge

Cars can drive on it

and there a couple of surfing schools there.

It is a beautiful spot with the green hills one one side and the misty hills of the other side of the estuary on the other

.

and this long, gently sloped sand beach

with breakers, perfect for beginner surfers (the surfing equivalent of a "bunny hill")

After strolling the beach and playing with our cameras ...

.. first time I had seen my shadow since arriving in Ireland ...

we had a couple of lattes, Nic had a gluten free Brownie and I had a Jaffa Cake (orange pound cake, topped by a orange caramel sauce and iced with chocolate icing), at the beach side cafe and restaurant.

We drove off the main road onto a poorly marked "L" road (Nicola would prefer we stay on "N" roads), they are really only 1 (small) car wide.

We have realized that Irish "castles" are often little more than a stone tower.

But they are in beautiful locations.

Its on a "Storm Beach" where great big rocks are tossed up by the storms and smoothed and rounded by the water and knocking together.

These little orange flowers are all along the hedgerows, growing wild and as abundantly as our "ditch lilies" in southern Ontario. They are Montbretia.

Our final destination was Dingle and it was a bit of a shock to the system. Although not very big it was full of tourists, parking was a problem, people were walking everywhere and the harbour was lined with buses. Small tour boats took people on a harbour tour in the hope of seeing the resident dolphin that seemed to live at the entrance.

There were a lot of very tourists shops with shamrock teatowels, Guiness t-shirts and cartoon sheep

but we also managed to find some excellent art galleries and stores

with sea glass, celtic jewelry, photography, painting and

fabulous woven hangings in this store.

Nic and I took a break from the crowds, out on to the commercial fishing wharf and then , still full from our treats at Inch Beach, just had a prawn cocktail for lunch.

We headed back then and had to contend with more traffic than we are used to. We had only been home about an hour when the power went out. Bridie came over with some candles for us. That's why the blog didn't get done last night. We read on our tablets and then headed to bed early as we had to be up early for my Skellig Michael boat trip.