Sheep, cliffs and high waves

 

I first visited Ireland in 2011 when I spent a week in Dublin, but I had a bigger adventure waiting for me this time. Eight days of travelling across Ireland by a rented car. There were some trouble with renting a car since most of the agencies require a credit card to hire a car so me and my boyfriend frantically searched for an agency where we could hire a car with a debit card. How will we drive on the other side of the road, how will we manage the narrow roads? What did we put ourselves into? These were the questions we had a few days before we boarded our plane. Soon the D-Day when we drove to Budapest where we boarded our plane to Dublin and the worries were replaced by excitement. Because we arrived in Dublin in the evening, we booked a cheap hostel in Dublin and got the car the next morning. First few kilometres were stressful even for me even though I wasn’t driving. Sitting in a seat where you’re used to also have a stirring wheel is very odd and I confess that I hit a break a couple of times, even though it wasn’t there. But we were on our long planned adventure and after a few kilometres, the country of beer, king people and greenness started opening to us.

The first day of the drive we went to national park Wicklow Mountains, which is the biggest national park in Ireland and the only one on the east of the country. Even though you could assume that you will find mountains here (because of the name), we’ll be disappointed if we’ll expect that. The highest peak is Lugnaquilla with 925 metres so you definitely will not find rocks and pointy peaks. The first goal was Powerscourt Waterfall, which was ok for our first destination but I wouldn’t recommend a visit, considering what we saw in the next few days. More attractive is the lake Lough Tay, a small lake, which is shaped like a Guinness glass, as the water is black and there is white sand on the beach that was imported there by the Guinness family. The landscape took our breath away. Bushes with purple flowers, fuchsias that we find in the wilderness and little paths for the backpackers. The nature is truly wonderful but our fear of narrow roads definitely came true in this national park. We were planning to visit another village here and the biggest lake in the park but the roads were so narrow and we were only driving “on the wrong side of the road” for a couple of hours, so we decided to turn around and continue our way outside of the national park to Waterford where we stayed for our second night.

Waterford is one of the oldest cities in Ireland. It was established by Vikings and named it “Weather Fjord” as it was a shelter for ships. Waterford is now known to the Irish by the crystal, which is made here. The visitors can take a tour of the factory and those who are not clumsy can visit their crystal shop. We were planning our path by the Irish coast. One of the planned places was Ballycotton, where we wanted to take a beach hike. One of the comments on the internet of this beach hike was, that it was the most romantic way in Ireland and that he got inspired to propose to his girlfriend on this hike (maybe this is why I chose this path). We started it and quickly finished it. Here we experienced the worst wind in our lives, which wasn’t romantic at all. We were freezing and wet and decided to go back with a promise to by ourselves hats in the first shop that we see. Because we didn’t want our drive to be for nothing, we decided to take a few selfies as this was the first place where we saw cliffs. We took some steep stairs to the cliffs and admired the big waves. On the way to the cliffs, there were signs that said “Danger” and told us to turn around. Why, were we thinking. There wouldn’t be any stairs if it were that dangerous. When we came to the “selfie friendly” location, we pulled out our phones and when we wanted to take a picture, the waves came. Suddenly we were surrounded by water and luckily we could jump on bigger rocks to the stairs and sadly discovered that the waves were faster than the camera.

 

We focused on nature, beaches and cliffs while planning the trip. Ireland doesn’t have a big amount of big cities. In the first few days we stopped in Cobh and Cork. Cobh is known after its harbour where 2.5 million Irish immigrated between 1848 and 1950. On 11th of April 1912 Titanic sailed from Cobh and there are still a lot of little signs, which remind us of that. There is also a Titanic memorial with names of people who boarded Titanic and died. In Cork we were admiring beautiful bridges, churches, and the rain made us to visit some shops. Cork is also a place where we saw triple rainbow. Rainbows can be quite often seen in Ireland as it often rains and it’s sunny at the same time. If you’re going to Ireland, take an umbrella. Even in the sun you can not be 100% sure that it won’t rain in the next hours. You can’t be dry in Ireland. 

Ring of Kerry is a well known travelling site, or travelling circle. It runs on the coast of the Kerry Peninsula and starts and ends in the Killarney national park. We split it into two days, even though it is totally manageable in one day. This is also the place where people on the internet were complaining about narrow roads and heavy traffic. But we were lucky. The roads were completely fine, comparing to the roads in Wicklow Mountains and the coast is beautiful. This is the charm of renting a car. You can easily park your car anywhere, go off the road when you see something interesting and so on. Coincidentally we drove off the road and drove to the beach with little stones and there was the Atlantic Ocean in front of us. We had to make sure that the water really is too cold to jump in, grabbed a few little stones as souvenirs and jumped back in the car. In a few minutes we again saw a sign for a beach, which was also internet-famous so we stopped there and parked on an endless sandy beach. Father and son were building a sandy castle, the sea was calm and there were sand dunes everywhere. Magical. We were walking from a dune to a dune, admiring the views and wondering what can be more beautiful than that.  

Well, we were greeted by sheep next. One angry sheep. The landscape is intersected by pastures and meadows. Even though you haven’t seen a house for a long time, there will still be fences and sheep. One sheep got out of the fence and stood in the middle of the road. We carefully stopped the car and wanted to take a picture but the sheep started running towards the car. The car stopped running a few times before we could run away from the angry sheep. We also visited the Kerry Cliffs, which are promoted as the most spectacular on this way. We took a ferry from Cahersiveen to Valentia island (the drive only took us five minutes) and enjoyed the spectacular views that convinced us that this is the best trip we ever took. We can see castles almost everywhere and they’re rarely preserved. We were surprised by the castle on a really small island. Around it there were high waves and we wondered how they built it. Some castles now serve as cemetery walls, some are just abandoned. But the castle we would recommend is Ross Castle.

 

One of the reasons we took this trip were cliffs. This was the thing we never wanted to miss. Cliffs of Moher are the most famous cliffs in Ireland also the most visited. They rise 214 metre high and there is an 8-kilometre long path aside them. Everything is really well protected and the entrance fee is also not high. But the true views and amazement happen outside the tourist point. There’s a hiking path by the cliffs but it’s at your own responsibility. The “danger” signs were again not good enough and we bravely stepped on the hiking path, which runs by the cliffs, without fences or protection. Those who are afraid of heights will get weak in the knees but if your step is careful, everything is worth it. More cliffs open to you and every view is priceless. Believe me, sometimes I wished my eyes were a camera and they would take a photo every time I blinked. An unforgettable trip with a lot more stories to tell.