Nora Roberts's Travelogue of Ireland:
Ring of Kerry—August 30, 2004
We set out on a simply delightful morning of blue skies and puffy white clouds. Shirtsleeve weather. We decide to do the southwest Ring of Kerry, taking offshoots to sites here and there. The water's indeed Kerry blue today, gleaming against the green, and the green climbing up to the softer tones of the Reeks.
We drive down winding roads, sharp turns, around heather and gorse covered rock with the water on our left, pretty bays and lakes and rivers. Our first stop is an old dry rock ring fort called Staigue, well the other side of us from Sneem. It's astonishing, the way it's survived, the sheer wonder of its architecture, not a drop of mortar in the flat stones that rise and rise in a circle on a hill overlooking a pretty slice of water. We've come down a narrow fushia-lined road to get there, and hear sheep when we stop. There's an American couple just leaving who volunteers to take a picture of both of us.
On the steep climb to the fort is a little sign asking for one Euro each, and a little blue box to put the coin in.
The light is gorgeous. Luminous and bright, giving everything, blue and green, a lovely sheen. Along the way we find a craft shop and stop. It has a good selection, nice stuff, but the best thing about it is a big sheep dog who appears to live there. I go up to say hello, and he rolls right over so I can give him a good belly rub.
We drive on from there toward Waterville, and stop here and there just to look at the stunning view. Little islands floating in the water, and others nearly lost in the mist of distance, with the hills green and brown on the other side, backed by those soft, dark mountains.
There's a wide sand beach at Waterville, and people in the water that's very nearly that teal Caribbean blue toward the shore. I see a black lab swimming and playing with its family, far below in the water.
We keep going, winding our way. There's everything, mountain, hill, sea and sky. I see what look like slimmer versions of the purple gayfeathers I grow at home spearing along the roadside, along with rivers of those bright orange lilies.
We pass through pretty towns, neat as pins with painted houses along the street.
The bays are extraordinary now, sparkling blue in the sunshine, and at one stop I sit in the car and watch, while BW gets out to take pics, a single slice of green field gleaming, then going into shade when the clouds pass over, only to gleam again.
We're heading to a castle ruin, down one of those tiny roads off the main in rural Kerry, and two cars coming our way are taking more than their share of the road. They don't ease over, not a bit, and BW's forced to squeeze over into the hedgerows. I hear, and feel, a nasty bump, and think: That can't be good.
It's not. We've got a puncture (flat), and pull off into the long land that leads up to a farm on a hill.
I get out to sit on a stone wall, pondering the pretty nasturtiums and snapdragons as BW gets out the jack. But he can't find the spanner (lug wrench). He looks and looks, and this could be a "situation". Along come a farmer in his little white truck. He's worried about a para-glider (hang glider) he's been watching. He thinks he's gone down, and hoped we knew something. But seeing our trouble, he gets out to help BW look for the spanner, which neither can find. The farmer explains that the manufacturer puts on special lugs to discourage theft, and we need the right spanner. Maybe he has something that will do.
BW goes with him to his house just down the road, while I wait and sit in the sun, watch the cows and flowers. A young man rides by on his bike, riding double with his little boy of about three. I hear them laughing before they reach me, and Da telling the boy to use both hands, and the boy laughing, laughing as he holds one up.
They stop to ask if I need help, and I say we seem to have it, but thanks.
Well, the spanner doesn't work, and the number Hertz gave our Samaritan--who has a wife and four children at home--doesn't work either. He goes to a neighbor, comes back with a box of spanners, but alas, no luck.
Back to the house they go to call a BMW mechanic while I stroll along the lane and wait.
At last. It turns out there's another tool box--in the top of the boot. No one would've looked there. But now in short order, the tire's changed, and we're on our way with many thanks--and a twenty Euro note to our savior.
We follow our road a little ways and veer off to the castle ruin. It's simply spectacular. Most of its walls are smothered in ivy, and it looms atop a hill and backs to the water. You can climb up rough old steps, if you're game enough, and ease your way along narrow paths to chambers and openings where the wind whips through as it would in a tunnel. A Brit family comes along, and I hear the mother repeatedly tell young Hayden NO! Not to climb there, not to go there, not to do that. He's a game one, young Hayden, and wants to come up where I am. But I'm with his mother on this, as I'm not completely sure how I'm going to get down again.
We start our way back and aim toward a pass through the Reeks. We climb up, up, up through the rocky mountains with fields all around where sheep or cattle graze, then down, down, to the sea of green that is the valley, and the sky's a blue as the lakes. Up again, winding our way up through the next ridge, and down the skinny roads to the next valley. The passes here are stunning, but nothing as fierce and dramatic as Healy. Softer, more pastoral, greener and less savage by far.
We have to pause while sheep are led across the road by farmers and the herding dogs. And a bit later come across a little black pom who must belong to an old woman walking outside a little community of houses and leaning on her cane.
And on into Kenmare and home.
I go into the pub and order drinks while BW tells the doorman our troubles with the tire. It seems there's a place just the other side of Kenmare, and they're willing to stay open a bit late to help us out. So off BW goes while I take our drinks up, have a shower and wait. He comes back, having bought a new tire, which the mechanic agreed was necessary after seeing the shape of the old.
We have a marvelous dinner at the hotel, and dessert as well, though we're not sure exactly what we've got due to the accent of the French waitress. Whatever it was, it was heaven, and a lovely way to end an adventurous day.
Nora
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