Follow the adventures of Paul Pitzers and Grace Pitzer

Irish Adventure

10/3/2019

The Rest of Killarney

Sorry I messed up the banner, may have to wait until home to fix.

Ring of Kerry - Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019

We headed out from Abbey Lodge on the small bus with Mike as our driver, to travel the loop called the “Ring of Kerry.” This is a large peninsula that sticks out into the North Atlantic Ocean in the SW part of Ireland. We Oregonians know what it is like to drive the coast when it is socked in with clouds and fog. You get the picture of what our day was like. Often, we could not even tell there was a beach or ocean out there, to our right. In the center of the peninsula is a mountain range, the MacGillycuddy Reeks, with the highest point being 3414 ft. Nevertheless, Joan said it is difficult to climb.

Along the way we learned that farming is no longer the main industry, but has been taken over by Big Pharma companies and other tech companies, because of the Irish tax incentives. Cows and sheep abound everywhere, and they are all grass fed. There are about 7 million sheep on the island. Other crops are barley, wheat, oats and potatoes, in that order. Guinness and other breweries are big here.

One stop was at Waterville. Charlie Chaplin made if famous by spending a lot of time there with Walt Disney, and there is a family home still nearby. We had lunch in the small town of Sneem where we were served soup and sandwiches and a bit of desert before being given a half hour to walk around town and across a bridge over a lovely rapid flowing small river. So far, nothing to buy has caught my eye.

We returned to Abbey Lodge early, skipping a couple of stops because it was raining, and we then had time for a short rest before going out for our Welcome Dinner at Hannigans.

The Rest of Killarney - Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019

This morning we boarded jaunting cart, which are two wheel carts drawn by a horse. Our driver, called a Jarvey, was fourth generation doing this job and he had lots of stories and history to share along the way. We saw herds of deer in the fields and several bucks with large racks of horns. This was rutting season. The ride took about an hour or so to the Ross Castle where we got off the carts and walked around the castle to the boat dock on Killarney Lake. Even though it was windy, we took the open boats over the choppy water to a small island where there is an ancient ruins of an old religious building and a small chapel. It was very interesting.

However, as we walked around my knee got a lot worse, and when walking back down to the dock I felt something pop on the back of my knee, and I could no longer put any weight on it. David and Paul helped get me to the boat and then back up the long walk to where the bus would pick us up. While we were doing the slow walk, Joan was calling around to find a doctor who could see me. On her seventh try, to a family friend, she got me in, so the bus dropped Paul and me off and then carried on to their next stop. The doctor was very nice and he put my knee through all sorts of contortions, then he determined that it was a torn cartilage. He was able to find a pair of crutches for me and prescribed Codeine with Tylenol. The office called a cab to take us back to Abbey Lodge. I settled down on the sofa in the lounge with ice while Paul went down the street to a pub to get us some Irish Stew for lunch. It was good. I hung out in the lounge until time to go upstairs to bed.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group went on to have lunch at the Killarney House, which was commissioned by an Earle in the 18th century. It has been restored and has a lovely garden. From there the group went to the Troc Waterfall, which is quite lovely and good sized. It was a bit of a walk, but worth it, I’m told. Then, some went for a tour of the Muckross House. The group came back to the hotel pretty well drenched, as it has been raining hard.

Paul and Melanie went out to dinner and then brought back some food for me. By then it was time to work my way upstairs and carefully packed up ourselves for leaving in the morning. The pain meds had kicked in allowing me to move about using generally my toes.

Friday, Sept. 27, we left Killarney for Dingle. More about this in the next post.