Ireland, Day Four: Slea Head Drive

We spent our full day in Dingle doing the Slea Head Drive, a ~40 mile loop with lots of sights along the way. 

The first one is a very weird little Celtic & Prehistoric Museum, run by an American musician who has collected an amazing collection of ancient artifacts and opened this place (which might also be his house?) to display them. His dog greeted us at the door and we paid 5 Euro to look at the treasures.

I had a pretty good feeling about it right off the bat. How does one come into ownership of a parrot-headed lizard fossil?

Not to mention The Largest Wooly Mammoth Skull in the World. !!!

Some of the displayed items are carefully labeled, but he's got a bunch of other things just sitting around. Like a human skull amidst 200,000 year old tools.

And a cave bear skeleton!

Stuff.

It was a super cool place. I've tried to google this guy in the intervening time and there doesn't seem to be any information available about where he got the money to buy all of these priceless items, or why they're all displayed in his house in Dingle, Ireland. But in a way it feels better not knowing, having a nice sense of mystery about it.

The rest of the Dingle drive was natural and ancient wonders.

Ireland is just so pretty, everywhere you look.

We stopped to look at Dunbeg Fort, a neolithic fort which is presently crumbling into the sea. It was endlessly fascinating to me on this trip how so many of these intact 5,000 year old structures are sitting around in the open air. Most of them were built without mortar. It's just stacked stones.

Prehistoric people really knew how to choose an impressive site for their forts.

The extremely friendly guy at our B&B told us there was a 5km walk near the Blasket Islands information center (centre) so when we got to that point we stopped and went in to ask them about it. The lady was super nice and told me to take a photo of the map rather than paying 50 cents for it. Then we set out up a long, long hill. This was our first hike in Ireland and pretty much all of them started with up, up, up.

At the top this dog ran over to say hi. Her name was Ruby.

UP, UP, UP.

It's hard to tell, but that's an island there off the coast, Great Blasket Island. People used to live out there, but they were always getting trapped with no supplies by weather and finally the Irish government made them leave. The village is still there, and you can take a boat out to tour it if you want and even stay overnight in "self-catering lodging."

When we got to this hill (which is much steeper than it looks here), Ben immediately took off for the top. You can see him disappearing just to the right of the rocks.

I sat quietly at the bottom.

After a few minutes I started to worry he'd fallen and been killed, or broken his ankle and couldn't get down, etc., and I climbed up the stupid hill after him to find out. Just as I reached the top he came over the top of another ridge further away, ankle bones intact.

It didn't rain on us at all for this entire walk, which in retrospect is shocking. But we weren't used to Ireland yet, and thus didn't appreciate it.

First sheep sighting!

After the walk, we stopped and shared a BLT and rhubarb crisp in the visitor's center, just beating out a huge group of teens who had gotten off a bus. Then we got back in the car. 

The last major site on the loop is the Gallarus Oratory, a 1300 year old stone church built without mortar, still watertight after 800 years. It's amazing. Just sitting there.

Back in Dingle, we parked down the hill from our B&B (Dingle Eask View, the pink one) for more walking. This place was great, by the way. The ceiling and walls were thin, but we learned this was pretty standard for most B&Bs in Ireland. The owner's family was really great.

This was an easy coastal walk along Dingle Bay to a lighthouse.

Benjamin brought his binoculars and we watched the tourist boats swarming around for a while - I was positive I had a Fungie sighting and just as I said so out loud, you could hear a big shout from the tourists across the water! I totally saw Fungie for real.

How is it REAL?

For dinner we went to Out of the Blue, a seafood restaurant on the water that takes its craft very seriously. If there's a storm and the fishermen can't fish, the restaurant doesn't open. We had stopped by the previous night but there were no tables; they asked if we'd like to make one for the subsequent night and we sure did. And it was great.