Sunday 25 August – Mucking about in Muckross; the Dingle Peninch, inch by inch.

After a light breakfast, accompanied by Oscar and Felix staring at us with pleading eyes through the glass courtyard door (their dogs, not the owners, who chatted with us as we ate), we headed off for the west coast, at one stage passing a horse with a sulky behind.  First stop was Muckross House, a huge mansion comprising drawing rooms, a ballroom, fourteen bedrooms, separate quarters for the children and the many staff. The Muckross Estate dates back to the 17^th century with the present house being built in 1843.  It has had a number of owners, the last of whom, an American, donated the entire estate to the Irish government in 1932.

We took the compulsory 60-minute guided tour and visited almost all of the house, marvelling at its grandeur, furnishings, art works and the huge array of cooking utensils needed to service the occupants and their frequent guests, which included Queen Victoria and her entourage in 1846.  Unfortunately photographs were not permitted, so you will have to imagine it. We also walked through some of the gardens and admired the views down to Muckross Lake. The entire estate comprises some 6,000 acres.

We then walked to the nearby ruins of Muckross Abbey, constructed about 1445 as a Franciscan friary.  It had a violent history and at one stage was ordered closed by King Henry VIII, however was re-opened when the antipathy to the Catholic Church abated somewhat.  All of the external walls and some of the internal walls are still intact so it was possible to gain a good sense of what it would have been like in its heyday.  There is an old legend that many, many years ago a monk touched the ancient yew tree that still grows in the central courtyard of the abbey, despite warnings of the dangers of doing so.  He then started doing some gardening and promptly dropped dead.  So the legend persists that touching the yew tree could be fatal.  John chose to test the legend and embraced the tree (the very same tree, mind you), but as a precaution will refrain from gardening in the future.

On the road again, to Dingle, stopping along the way for a stand-up lunch of a toasted sandwich while admiring the view over Castlemaine Harbour, then onto Dingle and commenced the Slea Head Drive, a very slow 47km around the Dingle Peninsula, admiring the beautiful, at times dramatic, coastal scenery, passing a number of significant sites, including the site of the filming of some of “Ryan’s Daughter”, the house where Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman stayed while filming of  “Far and Away” and, more interestingly, Neolithic stone pillars and a stone fort, the Gallarus Oratory, a Christian church built 1,300 years ago, and stone homes abandoned during the potato famine of 1945 (before the famine 40,000 people lived on the peninsula; during the famine many died and many fled and even now only 10,00 people live here).  We also passed Ireland’s second highest mountain, Mount Brandon, as well as countless cars and motorhomes, all competing for their space on the narrow roads.

After completing the loop we returned back along the road we had come in on to Inch Beach, where we were booked in to the Shamrock B&B, with views across the fields to the water.  Dinner at the local pub tonight, then an early start in the morning.