Next morning we were going west and we had a choice of two routes, one of which took us back by Galley Head. So we decided to see how the lighthouse looked in morning light.

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The other benefit of the route we chose was the Drombeg stone circle. There are at least ten of these that I know of along this southwest Irish coast. This one is fully intact and beautifully sited on a flat spot overlooking a valley.

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We then worked our way up to Bantry and stopped for tea. Bantry is one of the spots that claim to be the departure point of St. Brendan on his transatlantic voyage.

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Then around the end of Bantry Bay and onto the Beara Peninsula.  Going onto Beara one sees immediately that he has entered the wild and wooly part of Ireland. Wild because the terrain is largely untouched by the hand of man. The rocks are just too big to move and if you do you simply uncover more rocks. And wooly because the only thing the land is good for is grazing sheep and goats. This extends west through large swaths of counties Kerry and Clare.

The mountain below is Hungry Hill which has had that name since before the Famine but I don't know why. We are looking across Bantry Bay.

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We had a lovely lunch at a little craft and sandwich shop and had to make a decision about the rest of our day. I had a couple of places I really wanted to photograph near the tip of Beara but they would be sunset shots and it was still early afternoon. So we decided to go over the Healy Pass to our accommodations in Kenmare and try to get back down Beara on one of our four nights in that spot. At the top of the Pass we entered Co Kerry and would be there seven days, between Kenmare and Dingle.

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Jeanne Marie chronicles our crossing of Healey Pass _8503081-Pano

Above is Glanmore Lake, just below Healy Pass. Very typical of County Kerry.

By the time we got settled into our quarters, just a three minute walk from Kenmare’s main street, it was late enough that we would have to pick a subject for sunset that was close by. So we headed over to Ross Castle in Killarney National Park.

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We got back in time for some music, banoffee pie, and a pint. The musician is Frank O'Sullivan and he was good. 

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