The Dingle Peninsula - no good song lyrics for this one so...

...here are the Pogues performing Dingle Regatta to set the mood:



I'm writing this from Dublin airport after returning to the capital late yesterday from the beautiful Dingle peninsula in the far south west. We set off early Tuesday morning for the long drive which, compared to moving day was pretty uneventful. There were some nearside curbs which won't remember us fondly and the combination of winding 10ft wide roads and 100km/hr speed limits seems to have satisfied Megan's driving urges for the time being but the scenery was often spectacular and we arrived safely around lunchtime.

We spent our first afternoon hiking out to a lighthouse near the mouth of Dingle Harbor and saw the local celebrity dolphin frolicking in the bay - he's apparently been there for the last 26 years and for reasons lost to everyone is known as Fungie.


According to our guidebook Ireland is now the EU's most expensive country after Norway and with our bank account firmly in agreement after Dublin decided to rein things in in Dingle. Foregoing the local hotels we therefore decided to stay at a local "hostel" (we were the only guests) run by a woman most easily described to UK readers as the long lost sister of Father Ted's Mrs. Doyle. Unfortunately her price didn't seem to cover heating the house so we took refuge for the evening in a local pub which featured some great traditional music.

The next day (and I promise this was Megan's idea), we rented bikes to ride a 45km loop around the tip of the peninsula. Following the coastal road for the first half was the perfect way to experience Ireland's famed forty shades of gray and while the weather held off for most of the way the heavens opened on the way home and we were pretty soggy by the time we made it home.

Seeing the peninsula off-season we got the clear impression that the area hadn't really woken up for the summer yet though if anything the cold weather and sleepy streets made it much easier to appreciate the culture of the place which would have been lost at the hight of summer. Dingle is one of a number of areas in Ireland where the government has actively tried to preserve all things Gaelic and as a result Irish is still most people in the town's first language, there are no translations on the roadsigns and gaelic football is still shown in all the bars (though sadly we couldn't excape the Champions League semi-finals). The sense of history is equally striking as every one of the thousands of tiny dry stone walled fields that make up the patchwork landscape seemed to contain a historic pile of rocks which might once have been a celtic church, fairy fort or pile of rocks depending on how entrepeneurial the farmer happened to be. Even the few examples that have been preserved are an incredibly tangible link to the peoples who have inhabited this area for the last 6,000 years - below is one of the earliest Christain churches in Ireland, built without mortar and still watertight after approximately 1200 years.

That's it for now but if you are desperate to see the thousands of photos that aren't quite as good as the ones we're posting there is now a link to our photostream on the right.

p.s. Ben posted this despite what it says below!