ZigZag Wanderer

Thursday 18th September 2025

Have a guess. Yep; rain.

It’s fairly warm rain though, and that ‘fresh breeze’ (ha!) has moderated. A bit…

Almond croissants (Lidl, if you haven’t already guessed) provided a pleasant breakfast repast, and Her Lacyship had another good run on the beach during a weather lull, but we really didn’t fancy breaking camp too early. The Dingle peninsula awaits us today – Dingle town on the return southern shore leg – but given the huge grey pudding that swings low (not remotely like a sweet chariot, though) above us, obscuring the vistas, it isn’t that appealing just yet.

Having said all that, the wind and rain got steadily worse during the morning, to the point that the van was shuddering from side to side and the rain was pelting the windows. By noon, then, we had given up on the notion of moving on, and will sit tight for another night. Tomorrow is (allegedly) going to be a bit brighter and calmer, so maybe we’ll just pack up early-ish and cut across the peninsula to have a look at Dingle town, before moving on to do a full circuit of the Ring of Kerry. That’ll put us in a good position to move on to the Bantry area on Saturday, ready to move into our tiny barn conversion refuge for the week.

Looks pretty good at the moment!

Friday 19th September 2025

Amazingly, the wind died overnight, and it had stopped raining by the time we emerged from our cocoon.

However, urgency didn’t enter the equation, so, leaving at nearly midday meant we likely weren’t going to get quite as far as planned. And that turned out to be the case – but I truly think we saw the splendid best of the Dingle.

The Conor Pass road that slices across the Dingle mountains is utterly beautiful – if very narrow in places.

The summit is apparently the highest point on the Wild Atlantic Way, and taking in the views from there, from coast to coast, I can well believe it.

Downwards then to Dingle, and what a lovely little town greeted us. Yes, it’s obviously a tourist magnet, but not outrageously so – even parking a few steps from the centre cost us a mere 50 cents per hour!

We had one of the best coffees we’ve had in a long time at Pig and Leaf, and then picked up sandwiches and cakes at the bakery on Green St (can’t recall the name unfortunately), and these too were superb. Wonderfully fresh and flavoursome bread and fillings.

We can highly recommend Dingle town for a day out – or more.

Heading east along the coast road, there are expansive views, to the left, the Dingle mountains that we had just passed through, and to the right, the Ring of Kerry – our destination.

To be honest, on entering the Ring (ooh, matron…), it comes as a slight anti-climax (sorry; innuendo-overload not intended). It may be bigger (as a peninsula), but it feels a little underwhelming in the scenery stakes compared to the Dingle.

Still, by the end of the afternoon, we were only just over halfway round, at Waterville, our park-up for the night. Maybe the southern leg will show an improvement, but that won’t be apparent until tomorrow. However, the view we had before the sun went away completely was very special,

and provided a superb sunset over the water and distant hills.

And all totally free!

Meanwhile, we decided to pay our neighbours-for-the-night a visit. Good choice, too – but far from free. The Smugglers Inn comes quite highly rated, so we decided to risk a fair chunk of cash on dinner there.

And it was excellent. Lovely starters, followed by an Angus steak for me and Halibut for M. Both cooked to perfection. Another recommendation.

It’s just possible to spot ZZW between our Alaskan friend’s moho and the Smugglers Inn

On returning to the van we found another neighbour; the same folks that we had parked next to last night on the Dingle. Small world. Turned out they are from Alaska, renting a moho and spending three weeks in Ireland. We spent a solid hour chatting about the relative merits and de-merits of ‘RV-ing’ on each side of the pond, and nothing he said surprised me. Nice guy though.

Saturday 20th September 2025

Bright, sunny, scattered cloud. Yippee!

We set off after a leisurely breakfast and a beach walk with Lacy, making for Sneem initially. The stretch of road south and eastwards of Waterville is truly stunning with views for

miles, and some of the most incredible coastal scenery I’ve ever seen – and the weather made it so much better. So much for our reservations about yesterday’s northern leg; this made up for it in spades.

Sneem is also very attractive, with many local, independent shops and eateries – including Kelly’s where we lunched on home made produce and good coffee.

The Ring continues through some decent enough scenery, but nothing compared to the earlier offering, to Kenmare, a pretty, but very busy town. We stopped only at Aldi for provisions. Parking in the centre looked pretty difficult, sadly.

Travelling on, the N road that cuts across the blunt end of the Beara peninsula (part of the Ring of Beara) is

A shot from the side window. Not great!

another stunner, rising and falling, with valley views to the north, and Bantry Bay to the south, ahead of us. I’ll try to get some better snaps of it all when we do the full Ring circuit during the week.

Eventually, we arrived at our home for the week, The Stall. It’s lovely too, in a tiny home kinda way (nothing wrong with that though – have you seen what we’ve been living in for over two and a half weeks?).

Nice view from the front porch too…

I’m sure it’ll make a great base for touring the three SW peninsulas from (Beara, Mizen Head, and Sheep’s Head) for the next week.

Sunday 21st September 2025

The first full day in our ‘week-long-weather-refuge’, and we wake up to an almost perfectly calm, sunny day.

You really couldn’t make it up.

Anyway, today has been put aside for such things as sleeping-in (in a lovely comfy bed), showering, laundry, van-sorting, and general dossing around The Stall.

Just what we needed. Driving and sight-seeing recommences mañana.

Monday 22nd September 2025

A slightly chilly, but bright and still start to the day – which warmed up, eventally to the low 20s. Lovely!

As is our wont, we tarried somewhat, eventually heading out at around 11am; destination Skibbereen. It’s not that much of a place (and very annoyingly gummed up by roadworks in the centre. And I mean gummed up. We were stuck due to malfunctioning lights and inconsiderate drivers, not budging at all for at least 20 minutes until an obviously embarrassed roadworker turned up and made a way for us. Hopefully they sorted the totally one-sided light sequencing after that).

Anyway, we managed to find a roadside space and walked back to Annie May’s Bar, a place that holds fond memories of our last visit a third of a century since! We didn’t go in. It’s all changed now, and as we don’t partake these days, it seemed pointless. I just wanted to get a pic.

We walked back to Apple Betty’s café, and had a light lunch of coffee, sausage rolls, and cake. All excellent.

Hitting the road again, via Ballydehob, where yet more fuel was taken on board – this time for ZZW – we set the Nav for Crookhaven, the place we stayed all those years ago. It hasn’t changed much. O’Sullivan’s Bar (the southernmost pub in Ireland) where we once sat outside by the sea, eating pots of shrimps, is still there

as is ‘our’ bungalow. That was a wonderful last two weeks of August when the sun, unbelievably, shone almost every day

Our base way back then

Driving on further west on Mizen Head, and another fantastic spot we wanted to revisit, is Barley Cove. It’s still fairly unspoilt although there seems to be a few more new houses overlooking now, but the beach is still utterly gorgeous. Well worth visiting.

Five aspects of beautiful Barley Cove

Next stop, and another belated revisit, was the Mizen Head station, right at the very SW tip of Ireland (so pretty much the Lands End equivalent, but nothing like so horribly commercialized). Yes, there’s now a charge to enter, but it was a reasonable €6 each (€7.50 for normal underage ‘adults’) and worth it IMO.

The bridge now takes you to a proper exhibition of aspects of the station that you couldn’t get to see on our last visit, and allows you to go past the buildings quite close to the very tip of Mizen Head. Next stop Canada if you don’t mind getting wet.

The very end…

By this time it was close to 5pm, and kicking out time, so it was time to make the considerable climb back to the Visitor Centre (exit via the gift shop, as usual).

Mizen Head also marks the Start, or Finish, of the west coast North to South run that we started at Malin Point what seems an age ago.

The ‘other’ end!

The run back to base takes in a fair bit of Mizen scenery, touching both the south and west coasts, the latter affording views of Sheep’s Head and Beara beyond. A stop at the Bantry Lidl for odds and ends, and then ‘home.

What a lovely day.

Today’s trip. Ignore all the ‘noise’ in the top RH corner. Polar Steps sometimes does some very weird things. We started and finished at the red dot, and in an almost straight line to and from Bantry.