ZigZag Wanderer

Tuesday 23rd September 2025

Another perfect – calm and perfectly clear – morning in the valley. Perhaps a good day to wander further afield, but we’ll probably just roll into Bantry to explore the town for a few hours.

And Bantry is a quite attractive town. There’s not a huge share of great Irish architecture here, that’s for sure (unless you count large, grey, angular hotels and supermarkets overlooking otherwise good-looking marinas and inlets of course) but much of what is there is fine enough. Walking away from the free car park by said inlet and supermarket, the vibe changes quite quickly. The large Wolf Tone square, which also serves as a traffic gyratory, gives way to pleasant streets with plenty of independent shops and cafes (one of which provided our morning coffees – with pastries, of course).

Venturing further from the front brings you to a very steep hill where a stream tumbles by the side of the road, turning a water wheel as it does so. The still section of water to the side of the wheel seems to be the

resting place for anything that finds its way into the water further upstream, and there was a large collection of footballs bobbing around there!

I wonder what Hurley Bros Motor Garage sold back then (Renault cars on another site now)

Heading back down to the (other side of the) marina brings views across the water towards Beara, and gives a clue as to just why that blockhouse hotel was built there. The elevated views from the balconies must be spectacular.

Towards Beara

Wednesday 24th September 2025

A bit on the dull side this morning, but far from a bad forecast.

Today; the Ring of Beara.

The Beara peninsula is the third one up from the bottom left of Ireland. Smaller than the Kerry Ring (next north) but larger than Sheep’s Head (south of).

We’ve visited before, during that holiday many years ago, and have memories of the Healy Pass which cuts north to south

through the mountains of Beara. It may well beat the Conor pass on Dingle for scenic beauty, too, but I’ll not insist on it.

It is, however, spectacular.

We followed it from the north side this time, the opposite direction from last time.

Castletown, the main town on the peninsula, is… tired, to be polite. Oh, and (almost) everything is shut! We did find a couple of plces that would sell us a carry-out coffee, but even that wasn’t really bringing much to the table, so we moved on. Well, back the way we’d come, as we’d really seen enoughand didn’t fancy heading on to the end of the peninsula.

The road back along the southern coast does afford aome terrific views across the water to Sheep’s Head, and, to our left, the Beara mountains

.Reaching the end brought us to Glengarrif, which we’d already passed through a couple of times, and it looked quite alluring, so we decided to stop in search of sustenance – and found it in the form of several vans and trailers parked in the car park of a lage woollen (etc.) goods emporium. We chose galettes made in and served from an old converted (and French registered) Peugeot van, by a lovely French lady, to boot. And weren’t they just superb? We both chose Galettes Supérieure – ham, cheese, and fried egg. Basic food prepared so well it becomes a gastronomic experience. Coffee (also excellent) from the caravan next door completed our dinnertime repast – and was all we needed! Utterly delicious.

Thursday 25th September 2025

Dry again. Cool again. But no complaints.

One of the places we visited all those years ago, and which was a must to revisit, was the memorial to the 329 victims of the 1985 Air India terrorist bombing.

The plane came down off the County Cork coast, with a total loss of life, just two months before our first daughter was born, and she and her sister visited the beautiful, yet simple memorial garden and sundial at Ahakista, Sheep’s Head, Co. Cork with us just a few years later.

It’s a fittingly serene and lovely spot, overlooking the water and the nearby Mizen Head, and is perfectly maintained as a place to reflect and remember.

A few kilometres further west along the coast road, we stopped at the Old Creamery at Kilcrohane where we treated ourselves to lunch. Creamy chowder in generous proportions, and stuffed with all manner of seafood, served with home-made bread and (not home made) butter. Absolutely delicious it was too.

Looking from Sheep’s Head with Mizen Point in the distance

Choosing to drive to the tip – or as far as possible – of Sheep’s Head, with the intention of walking the last stretch, we found ourselves thwarted at the car park. No dogs indeed. Ridiculous.

Still, we managed tea at the cafe there, accompanied by the scent of what turned out to be a very extinct sheep just over the edge of the cliff. Sheep’s Head indeed!

It’s an exceedingly desolate kind of place out here – far more so than Beara, Dingle, and Mizen, but no worse for that. In fact we love it, and the fact that the road there is so challenging makes it even more special.

Friday 26th September 2025

The last full day at our little bolt-hole, and, while it’s not windy or rainy, it feels much chillier today. Maybe Finn McCool is conditioning us for the inevitable bad weather we can expect when we hit the road along Ireland’s south coast?

I jest, of course. Although it’s undoubtedly becoming somewhat more Autumnal, as one would expect in late September, the forecast is by no means too horrible. Fingers crossed that it’s correct…

As we’ve pretty much caught up with all our desired sightseeing, we decided to just have a bimble inland about half an hour to the small market town of Dunmanway. OK, it’s unremarkable, but has most of what you might need, including a very nice, very dog-friendly coffee shop, that serves excellent coffee, and lumps of cake the size of a small garden shed. And my carrot cake was bleddy superb too. Another genuine recommendation.

Aside from that, and a quick visit to the Super Value just along the road, we saw no need to hang about too long, so headed back via the Cousane Gap pass to Kealkill, and the Carriganass castle remains there. This is just a small ruin, but kept very nicely, and in a very pleasant riverside location.

Worth a quick look.

The final stop for the day was to be the nearby standing stones atop the hill between Kealkill and The Stall. I say ‘was’ as although we managed to find a safe parking spot on the very narrow winding hill road, on walking back to the stones’ location, it was just so boggy by the stile on the approach that we chickened out, so the following pic is the best we could do, sadly.

The Stones with the range of hills we’d just traversed via the Cousane Gap

Saturday 27th September 2025

It had started to whip up a bit windy during the evening, and that was obviously the prelude to a decent spell of stormy overnight weather, with everything getting a soaking for the first time since our arrival at The Stall. Nevertheless, the day dawned bright, still, and clear, so there were no dramas as we packed for our departure

We headed off at eleven, stopping for fuel at Bantry, and then at Lidl for fripperies (and butter).

Our first destination for the day was Skibbereen again, but this time to visit the Heritage Centre and famine exhibition. Quite the eye-opener it is too. Most people will know something about this awful period of Irish history, but the story is more horrific than most would imagine, especially when seen in this, one of the hardest-hit areas.

When the diet of the poor majority of the populace is potatoes – and pretty much only potatoes – when the blight, introduced from the Americas, wipes out that crop for years on end, then the worst will inevitably happen. People pawned what little they had – even their clothes – only to die cold and starving.

Man, sadly, will always blame the poor for their own demise, and we are obviously learning nothing from that lesson so harshly taught.

From Skib, we began our steady meander across the bottom of Ireland, looking east for the first time in a while, and hove to in Clonakilty. This is a rather attractive and busy (OK, it was Saturday, but you get the feeling about places) small town, which was once the home of the revolutionary Michael Collins; perhaps the best-known of the protagonists of the struggle for independence from the British Crown.

We wanted to have a look at his home on the pretty Georgian Emmett Square, but sadly it was getting close to closing time and there was a private tour ongoing, so we had to miss out.

However, we did manage to pick up some excellent club sandwiches and coffee which we ate as a late lunch/early dinner on a bench in the sun!

With time pressing slightly, we needed to secure a kip spot somewhere, and so we made for the foody hotspot of Kinsale southwest of Cork City. This is another camper-friendly place with plenty of free park-up spaces, and we chose one next to the river, and in easy walking distance of the little town’s centre, ready for a perambulatory exploration tomorrow.

Home for the night

Kinsale is also the start and end of the Wild Atlantic Way, so we can now say… tick, done that!

(A disclaimer though; we didn’t cover every kilometer of the WAW, but that was never the intention. There are so many meandering coastal branches and loops of it, it would take a lot longer to do it full justice. We did enough).