June 22nd: Dingle Peninsula

Saturday June 22nd: Dingle Peninsula and parts north.

"There's a band of showers moving westward, fairly widespread, temperatures of 13 to 18 degrees celsius. A few spots of drizzle later on on Saturday, further showers during the night, patches of fog, Sunday a mix of sunny spells and scattered showers."

Typical weather "forecast" in Ireland. Throw in some wind, and you get the picture. On any given day, you can pretty much guarantee the following:
a. Scattered showers
b. Some sun
c. Lots of clouds
d. Wind
In other words, more weather in a couple of hours than we get in California in a month. We drove into the Dingle Peninsula early Saturday morning, thus avoiding the hordes of tourists in their giant silver busses. Stopped at Inch Beach with the giant dunes where I played as a kid. W-I-N-D-Y.

Inch Beach, windswept and apparently endless.

Along the roadsides, abundant foxgloves, fuchsia, and the overpowering pink rhodedendrons that have taken over the landscape to the dismay of the natives but the delight of visitors. 

Carpet of pink rhodie blossoms

Two eejits on carpet of pink rhodie blossoms

Stayed the night on a traditional farm. Hoping to get to hand-milk some cows, but alas the farmer was far more interested in showing off his milking machines. Still, got to learn how the milk gets cooled and stored, and that the typical cow gives 8 litres each morning and 11 litres each evening!  All in the thicket Kerry accent, complete with interjections of "yerra sure" - a phrase I hadn't heard since childhood.

Along the way, we would stop at anything that took our fancy. Molly Gallivan's Traditional Farm near Kenmare proved to be an amazingly authentic look at the Ireland of famine times. Molly was a widow who raised 7 kids in a 4-room cottage that had been preserved exactly as it was when she lived there in the 1850s. She supplemented her income by making poitin (pronounced "putcheen") - the illegal potato whisky - and her house was thus known as a sibin ("shebeen"). You could see the still where she made it, and also her farm, complete with donkeys...

 potato rows...

and the ruins of a famine cottage. These ruins are visible everywhere, all that remains of the houses from which people were evicted or emigrated during the Great Famine.

This cottage would have housed 8-10 people plus their animals at night. When the potato crop fell victim to the infamous blight, they had few other sources of food. Despite the fact that there was actually plenty of food to go round, the English landlords had little mercy. Ireland lost half of its 8 million population to starvation and emigration. Truly a shameful chapter in history.
Molly's farm also had a neolithic wonder: two giant stones, about 30 feet apart, between which a ray from the rising sun would pass at dawn on the summer solstice. This was erected between 2 and 3 thousand years ago.