Ring of Kerry

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple and a simple thing is the right thing. -Oscar Wilde

Hello from beautiful Ireland! Today, I would like to invite you to join me on one of the most popular and beautiful drives in Ireland – the Ring of Kerry. We took another bus tour with two amazing guides who helped us understand better their country.

Ring of Kerry is a 170km tourist trail around the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry in South Western Ireland. Our bus tour started at 10 am and ended around 5pm. The weather was typically Irish: rain and fog in the morning and sunshine in the evening. People drive around the Ring of Kerry to see amazing scenery, do outdoor activities or visit small villages. Everyone can choose their own preferred sites to see. Here are the places we visited that day.

First the Kerry Bog Village:

It is a typical bog village, nobody lives here anymore and we can visit their houses and learn about their lifestyle. Here is the Irish Wolfhound, an ancient breed of dog revived in the 19th century, famous for being the world’s tallest dog:

Stable Dwelling: the stable and family residence under one roof. Heat from animals was necessary in warming the house:

The most common way to heat houses was bog or peat consisting of the partially rotted remains of dead plants which have accumulated on top of each other in wetlands for thousands of years. Areas where peat accumulates are called peat lands or bogs.

Peat or bos is cut in spring. Then put in small piles to dry:

Our driver even stopped the bus in a bog field to explain its importance:

Two conditions are necessary for the existence of bog: high rainfall and poor drainage. Originally peat lands covered 17 percent of Ireland. In Europe, only Finland has a higher proportion of this kind of soil. Ireland is one of the few countries where a wide range of peat land still exists.

Farmers used peat to store food because of the low temperature inside it. Many archaeological discoveries have been made during bog cutting, most of the items that can be seen in the Archaeological Museum in Dublin had been discovered in bogs. Even ancient human bodies are found there. They are called: ‘bog bodies’, usually victims of ritual sacrifice. Bogs are very acidic and this acidity is the reason why everything found there is in excellent condition.

Who knows what else can be found in these fields:

Learning about bog was definitely the biggest highlight of the tour, now it’s time for other interesting things and sites like…..

Irish coffee:

Everywhere in Ireland you can see homes that were abandoned during the famine in years 1845-1851. It is generally said that during that time one million died and one million left the country. Irish people suffered many periods of famine throughout their history. They had to pay rent for being able to cultivate their fields with food that they produced. Often there was not enough left to feed their families.

Often, greedy land owners would force them to pay with food and die as a result. Lord Headley from Glenne Bay was one of them. He wanted to own a castle. This is all that is left from his castle: