The Full Irish

The folks at the front desk of the Fairview in Killarney  would not stop asking us about breakfast. It started when I made the reservation two weeks out on www.BringFido.com: they immediately messaged me back to ask if I was interested in breakfast in their dining room. I told them that I wasn’t sure but could I let them know when we got there? I know the Full Irish breakfast is a hearty meal but did they really need two weeks to prepare it? When we checked in, they asked again and again I deferred. Their website let me know it was 14 Euros per person and I wanted to make sure that I had explored all options before I plunked down top Euro for my Full Irish. A quick spin around the neighborhood — and the internet — let me know that the hotel was my best bet. I let the desk clerk know that we would indeed be joining them and she was thrilled, putting me down for two people at 8 a.m., the first seating of the morning. Most hotel breakfasts in the States start at 6 or. 7 a.m. but he Irish apparently like to sleep in as much as they like their breakfasts.

We were up early the next morning, excited to get on the road and see the Ring of Kerry, one of the sights we had planned to see before Covid canceled our 2020 trip. It’s basically a drive around a jutting peninsula in the southwest of Ireland with a lot of gorgeous scenery. We had the great advantage of visiting before the summer tourist rush, when the roads would be clogged with tour buses and Americans driving on the wrong side of the road. Sure, it was cold and mostly cloudy but we wouldn’t have to fight for parking at the best viewpoints. Our guide was a great website https://www.theirishroadtrip.com/ring-of-kerry-drive/ (a terrific resource for driving guides in Ireland) that promised to direct us to the best and out-of-the-way spots, and leave the rest behind. Even with that, we were looking at seven hours on the road, including lunch and a few walks.  But first, we had to have breakfast. 

We were at the restaurant door at eight sharp, ready for the experience and a very sweet Eastern-European woman who ran the dining room showed us to our table. She asked if we would like something from the buffet and we were a little confused. Could we just help ourselves, we asked but she told me that we weren’t allowed to do that — probably a holdover from Covid restrictions — and asked us what we would like. Denise requested a fruit cup and I asked for some yogurt and granola. After that was delivered, she came back to take our order for hot food. I didn’t want to seem cheap, but I wondered if the buffet was the 14 Euro breakfast and this was going to be added on to the bill. I heard someone at a nearby table order the “half-Irish” and that sounded like a good idea to me: I didn’t want to commit to all that pork with a long drive ahead of me. Denise got the pancakes and we both helped ourselves when our friend came around with the pastry tray. Breakfast arrived and I tackled the various elements of the plate: half a raw tomato, one egg, one sausage, back bacon, black and white pudding (I asked the waitress for clarification but I’m still not sure what this was), and some grilled mushrooms, accentuated by an single, elegant scape of chive. Meanwhile, across the table, Denise was raving about her pancakes, and we both left satisfied and ready for the long day ahead of us. Of course, I had no idea how much the meal had cost us, but we had more important matters to attend to. 

Half-Irish, just like me! 

After our first tourist outing, a day trip to Wicklow National Park a couple of weeks earlier, Coco had let us know what she thought about narrow, winding roads and spending the day in the car by throwing up all over her backseat blanket. For that reason, we decided to spare her the aggravation and found a pet sitter in nearby Kenmare on www.pawshake.ie/ to watch her until we were done with the windiest roads of our trip. We didn’t have a lot of options but we lucked out with Kelly, a twenty-something gal with one dog and three cats of her own. When we found out about the cats, we were worried because Coco is generally against cats: she doesn’t quite know what to make of them but she’s not happy with the concept. Kelly assured me that she’d had plenty of dogs with Coco’s feline-aversion issues and, by the end of the day, they’d all be friends. We were still dubious, but the idea of having Coco get used to cats was intriguing, so we paid the fee and made plans to drop her off with Kelly near the start of the Ring drive. 

No sooner had we made it out of town and into the gorgeous Killarney National Park that serves as the starting point to the drive, when we ran into some stunning nature: two mountain goats locking horns and battling over something or other while a tiny baby goat looked on. This was all happening right on the side of the road and we stopped to film it (see below). This, of course, reminded us of the “animal jams” at Yellowstone NP, where something like this could back traffic up for miles. Here, we were the only car on the road and we watched spellbound until one of the goats gave up and sauntered off. The rest of the drive through the park was filled with stunning mountain and lake views and we arrived in Kenmare an hour later and found Kelly’s little house. See the goat video below (with in-car commentary from Coco)

Now, when I say “little,” I’m not exaggerating: it was on the end of a row of attached houses probably built in the early 1900s and, when we arrived at the door, the top of the frame only came up to my sternum. Kelly, no more than five feet tall herself, answered and we limboed through the door into the living room. All the cats immediately came to check out the new kid and Coco was on her best behavior — not thrilled but not growling.  We set up her rug and bowls so she would know she was staying for a bit and said goodbye. It’s always hard to leave her but we knew she would be miserable in the car. And if she could get acclimated to the cats in the next 30 hours, all the better. 

Coco and her new friend. Dom/Sub

Denise and I started out on the coastal part of the Ring, with our first stop in the charming little town of Sneem. The downside to driving the Ring in the offseason is that almost everything is closed (things start to come alive on St, Patrick’s Day weekend), but we were able to get a coffee to go and we took the advice of our virtual guide and headed to the secluded but beautiful Derrynane Beach, open all year. We took a stroll on the beach and admired the power of the North Atlantic Ocean and the ruins of St. Finian’s Abby across the water. Next stop was Waterville, and we took a walk along the waterfront, discovering a fascinating modern sculpture and a statue of Charlie Chaplin, who had spent summers there in the 1960s with his family. Our tour guide had recommended the town as a lunch spot but all the restaurants were shut and the promenade was too windy for a picnic so we got back in the car and headed west, although we were running out of land before Newfoundland

As we detoured onto the optional Skellig Ring, we started noticing several wildfires on the hills above us. At first we thought about calling 999 but there were so many of them around that we soon deduced that it was the farmers themselves doing the burning. We had experienced a similar thing when we lived in Walla Walla, with every September turned into a smoke-filled hellscape as the wheat farmers burned their fields to get them ready for the winter crop. Here, the issue was the gorse, a thorny shrub that can quickly take over grazing lands, and there’s an annual battle between the farmers and the authorities, who would rather the farmers didn’t set the fires at all. Today, as it turned out, was the last legal day to burn in the area and the farmers were taking advantage of that, but also throwing a kind of middle finger to the powers that be.  We found  a nice picnic area overlooking St. Finian’s Bay, near the town of Keel, and enjoyed our homemade sandwiches and a bag of crisps along with the dramatic view before the wind shifted and the smoke from the nearby fires convinced us to clear out. 

At this point, we started the long, switchback-filled drive up to Coomanaspic Pass. It was a bit of a challenge for the Renault but we were rewarded with an amazing view of the peninsula and Valentia Island at the top. Denise (of course) made friends with another couple who were stopped there, an Irish man and a woman in their fifties who had just spent ten years at a retreat in France. They had just returned to civilization and were getting reacquainted with their home country. They gave us some tips on what to see in the area and we said “adieu” and headed down the hill. Our next stop was Valentia and we found a short hike at Bray Head that took us through a flock of sheep grazing on the hillside. It was a little freaky to walk among the grazing animals but the sheep were impassive to our presence. They are “branded” by spray painting them bright, psychedelic colors, making them look very hip indeed.

After that, we made one last stop at the Geokaun Mountains and cliffs, a site rich in Irish folklore, before getting back on the road to Killarney. The sun, never very high in the sky this time of year, was quickly setting as we finished the last, and least scenic, part of the Ring of Kerry. What we did see was a lot more of the gorse fires and, for the first time all day, started to feel the effects of the nasty smoke on our lungs. I had that “smoke inhalation” feeling in the back of my throat that I remembered from the Walla Walla days, the beginning of two weeks of respiratory issues that are only now  resolving.

The peat bogs in the middle distance from the Geokaun cliffs.

The fires were the lead story on the national news that night, with dramatic film of firefighters attempting to quell the flames using primitive backcountry  equipment. I guess they didn’t have a way to get water to the remote sites but the footage made it look like they were bailing out the Titanic using a tin cup. There’s a lot of public support for the farmers on the gorse burning issue but you could tell by the tone of the newscast that the government is dying to shut down the centuries-old practice. 

It was a long day — we left the hotel before 10 a.m. and returned just after 5 p.m. — and we covered about 200 km (or 120 miles) but it was totally worthwhile in our opinion. The smoke put a slight damper on things but the scenery out there on the Wild Atlantic Way is spectacular. I don’t know if we would have enjoyed it as much at the height of tourist season, it was nice to be among the only ones on the road. We fell asleep wondering how Coco was faring in the house of cats. Tomorrow, we’d do a similar long drive on the Dingle Peninsula and then retrieve her in Kenmare before heading on to Cork.