Greener than Green: Ring of Kerry vs. Dingle Peninsula (Ireland)

lordofthewaves (51)in #travelfeed • 6 years ago

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about Ireland? Guinness? St. Patrick’s Day? Sheep? The Irish Blarney? For me it’s the green… Ireland is the greenest country I have ever seen. Yes, the rainforests in the Amazonas region are green. New Zealand is freaking green. But nothing beats the thousand shades of green in Ireland.

Soooo green....

Two of Ireland’s crown jewels are the Ring of Kerry and the Dingle Peninsula, neighbouring each other in the Southwest of the island. When we went to Ireland in September 2016 we were on a tight schedule to drive around the island in 9 days, so we had to make tough decisions regarding which places to visit and which places to skip. We almost skipped Dingle Peninsula. In this post, I would like to compare the Ring of Kerry with Dingle Peninsula and (spoiler alert) advise you not to skip Dingle Peninsula.

Ring of Kerry

Let’s start our journey a little bit south of Dingle, though - in Killarney. We chose this charming little town as our base to explore the Ring of Kerry. The Ring of Kerry is one of Ireland’s most famous tourist attractions - a 179 kilometres (111 miles) circle through green hills and coastal scenery. Initially, we planned to split the drive in half, but due to the aforementioned time constraints we did it in one day, which - in hindsight - was the right decision.

Since I already started with spoilers earlier I will continue this new tradition to say that we weren’t too impressed by the Ring of Kerry. In fact, we thought it was one of the less beautiful drives of the trip. The landscapes were stunning, don’t get me wrong and beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, but we found that there are greener hills, more dramatic coastlines, cuter towns and sheepier sheep in other parts of Ireland. Maybe the popularity of the Ring of Kerry comes from the fact that you get a little bit of everything - just not the best.

The one part about the Ring of Kerry that we really liked, though, was Killarney National Park. Three spots in particular stood out to us: Muckross Abbey, Ross Castle and Lady’s View.

Getting spooked out at Muckross Abbey

Muckross Abbey is spooky as hell. This roofless but otherwise well preserved monastery is surrounded by a graveyard where a few Irish poets are buried.

My little tree in my little courtyard

The best part of the abbey is a courtyard that houses a giant Yew tree. Looks like the Tree of Life - or the Tree of Perdition, whichever way you want to look at it.

Red-headed Fire Tree and some really black cows

There’s an even spookier tree on the way to the abbey, though. Unfortunately the picture didn’t turn out that well but look at this flame-headed little beast. And the cows around it are pitch black, like some dark servants… shiver.

Ross Castle

Let’s go somewhere else quickly. Uhm… Ross Castle with dark clouds in the background is also a bit eerily-looking. We’ll move on.

This viewpoint is called 'Ladie's view'

Finally a less spooky sight. You have a nice view on the lakes of Killarney from here and you can take a rest from all the scary stuff down there in the valley.

Dingle Peninsula

After we finished the Ring of Kerry and the sights in Killarney National Park, we stayed one more night in Killarney before we drove off towards Dingle Peninsula. Our first stop on the way to our accommodation in Dingle was Inch Beach. This is the most popular beach on the peninsula and sits on a little peninsula attached to the south-east of the big peninsula (I just wanted to put the word ‘peninsula’ three times into the same sentence … wait … four times now).

Inch Beach on Dingle Peninsula

We had some Fish & Chips there and went onwards, passing some incredibly green fields before reaching the little fishing village of Dingle where we stayed overnight.

Green fields everywhere on the way to Dingle

After Dingle, the roads get really narrow but the landscape will definitely reward you for some sweaty palms while maneuvering the car towards the end of the peninsula. The coastal views here were - in our opinion - the most spectacular on our Ireland trip.

Wow. Just wow...

Talking about driving the car in Ireland: the Irish are well known for being funny and charming and they show off their sense of humour even with something as profane as street signs: look at this one for example: Should I go 50 or 80?

Irish humour...

There is another thing Ireland is famous for: sheep. In fact there are more sheep than people so it makes sense to get up close with this Irish majority population and take some selfies. I can tell you it’s really easy to make friends in Ireland! :)

My new BFF...

Before you go, I would like to leave you with some more stunning, green views of this fabulous country and I’d love to hear your opinions. Did you do the Ring of Kerry or Dingle? What did you like better? Maybe we missed something about the Ring of Kerry?

Star Wars movie location at Ceann Sibeal on Dingle Peninsula