The Dingle Ring

Friday, June 14,2013

Today was our trip around what is known as the Dingle Ring.

We drove for several hours to reach Dingle, a town on a peninsula in western Ireland. When we arrived in Dingle the rain had beat us there. We raced from the car into a restaurant in search of a bathroom and a warm cup of tea.  After this stop we braved the rain to visit a bookstore I had read about, and to see a bit of Dingle town before we hit the ring.

On the way to Dingle we had a choice between two roads to get to town. We chose the "exciting" route but we were disappointed because it was supposed to be a gorgeous drive on a clear day. Our day was anything but clear so we drove the scenic, hairpin turns in a cloud. 

The Dingle Ring is a circular 30 mile drive beginning and ending in Dingle. 

Our first half of the day consisted of scenic stops hindered by rain and fog. We arrived a beautiful, wild beach along the coast and we were the only people brave enough to drive the winding road down to the actual beach, as opposed to a look out point above. We had this beautiful beach all to ourselves until the sun began to make an appearance. Suddenly people noticed that we were there and began to show up in droves. We continued on our drive and visited the Blasket Islands center and a megalithic standing stone , along with Gallarus Oratory (an early Christian site built between the 7th and 8th century). 

We visited an ancient cemetery that contained some of the oldest gravestones in Ireland, along with a couple of Ogam Stones (tall, thin stones carved with Ogam (an ancient language made up of  diagonal lines) and a ruined church. This is the type of thing that we both love to explore.

We finished the day back in Dingle with a few minutes of shopping before the town shut down for the night.