The Ring of Kerry

22 September 2011


 We spent the 5th night in Killarney and rose early in the morning to take a tour of the ring of Kerry.  The ring is a road that goes through county Kerry and circumnavigates a mountain.

Along the way we viewed a fabulous, rugged, and, at times, seemingly desolate landscape.

County Kerry is on a peninsula that juts out into the North Atlantic.  However, because of the gulf stream, the climate is warmer than other areas in similar latitudes. 

 The stone walls delineate a person's land holdings.  When a landholder dies, his/her heirs divide the holding equally.  Originally, each landholder had enough land to bring in a substantial living.  Now, the land has been divided so many times that it is impossible to live off of the land.

 While we were driving "The Ring" our tour director said that the movie "The Quiet Man" was filmed here.  No wonder it looks familiar.  My mother loved that movie and watched it numerous times.

 Stone circles were made by ancient Celts.  No one knows how they got the stones to place in the circles or where the stones were from.  They are just there.  This particular circle is on private land so we could not go up there, we could only look from the road.

I think that the land in the distance is another part of Ireland since we were looking south, but I wouldn't swear to it.  It is beautiful any way.

 We were stopped, that is our bus in the picture, at a view point on the top of the mountain ridge.  The previous and next pictures were taken from this point.

 As I said earlier: beautiful, rugged, and desolate.

But oh so inviting.  I can see why it was chosen as a movie setting.