Ireland 2023 - Day 8 & 9 - Ring of Kerry II - Portmagee, Kenmare, and Killarney 

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Portmagee - On Friday (day 8) I woke at 6 am to the sound of sea mist slamming into the window at 50+ mph, making an odd, metallic sound. It was still dark out, and across the street (in parking lot light), I saw surging waves. 'Nor man nor beast should be afoot at this hour'...came to mind.   

Over a few cups of Barry's tea, I kept busy until the 8 am breakfast downstairs. Many of the breakfast attendees were familiar from the night before, so this place had overnight guests 

Afterwards, rain clouds lifted, while intense wind continued. Once the car was packed, I noticed the road paving crew mobilizing outside the hotel, in multi-layers, complete rain gear, equal to the elements.

I walked over to the foreman and basically said "I can't believe you can work all day in such crappy weather".  The wind was impossibly strong, and he leaned in and said "so would you ever want to move to Ireland?", and I instantly replied "I always wanted to, until now"... he was laughing & it was all in good humor. Then it was time for work...     

With the wind behind me, I was on the road to Kenmare by 10 am, and there was little traffic today, a good thing. Below are two web shots.

Kerry Cliffs, just south of Portmagee

Ring of Kerry drive (see note)

note - this is how Ring of Kerry scenery looks in good weather. This wide sweep of the bay at Waterville is looking west, back to the two recognizable hills at Valentia Island (in the far distance & just right of center).   

On the curvy 90-minute drive, I stopped just once, at an ocean-side City car park/restroom at Waterville, where the wind was so strong I could barely get out of the car, or back in. 

Kenmare - It was good to get to this small town, with only two main streets. I stayed at Davitt's Guesthouse on Henry St. & was directed to park off a back alley, right behind the Hotel kitchen, possibly the only overnight patron.  

Kenmare is a colorful town, 20 miles inland from the raging Atlantic. It was a calm & overcast afternoon, and I went for a walk down by the sleepy Kenmare River & tidal marshland, and then back through town to a Neolithic stone circle, on higher ground.   

note - you can enlarge any part of a picture by left-clicking in and then out again (with some exceptions). 

	walk along Kenmare River				turn around point
		tidal marsh		stone circle

I had dinner at Davitt's at 6 pm. Being a Friday night, only a small number of diners were there, another sign of the off-season? I sat near the beer taps & chatted with the servers, who spoke about the need to relocate soon, like to the Mediterranean, in order to stay employed. This is Europe, I realized, with a fluid job market, especially in the tourist industry. 

On Saturday morning, I was (again) the only one at an 8 am breakfast & ended up having an enjoyable 45-minute chat with the woman server, possibly the owner's wife. I noticed that the bar had a Tom Crean Brewery beer on tap and asked about it. She said that Crean's great-grand daughter (Eileen) until recently had a popular restaurant in Kenmare, but she closed it & instead opened a brewery (with rooms), just one street over. 

Around 9 am, I walked 5 minutes to the Tom Crean Brewery.....who is Tom Crean ?....see Postscript below.

	next street over		I stayed on Henry St.		at Davitt's Guesthoue
		I bought a woolen cap there the day before		City Park
	Tom Crean Brewery		Antarctic legend from  Anascaul (near Dingle)		note 1
		note 2		note 3

note 1 - this photo from the brewery beer garden shows Antarctic Explorer Robert Falcon Scott's doomed five man summit team to the South Pole in 1911/12, standing towards the front. Crean is not in the photo but he was on two of Scott's Antarctic attempts on the Pole. 

note 2 - this is one of Shackleton's two crews pulling an ocean-going vessel across the ice, after abandoning the (ice-crushed) ship Endurance, in 1914-16. Crean is in there somewhere, a member of the British Royal Navy, probably singing an Irish tune. (He was the 2nd ranked officer on that journey.)   

note 3 - This is Upper Killarney Lake, looking south, from a road stop on the N72.

Between Kenmare & Killarney, the N72 is amazingly narrow & curvy, and one-lane bridges suddenly come up, but thankfully it was uncrowded. The weather was so cold & drab that I passed up the chance to take a walk I had wanted to do for months in advance, so instead I arrived in Killarney early, checked my bag at Castle Court Hotel and then dropped off the car keys at the rental office in Killarney. Then I wandered around & did some minor shopping. 

Being a Saturday, it was a little crowded, with locals. The City cleverly arranged (or maybe uses a DJ) so that different street musicians can tie into the town's speaker system, for a few songs or tunes at a time. The musicians were in non-descript places, for instance, I walked past a fiddler playing the (profound) tune from Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, on a minor side street, and it was being broadcast across town. It was stunning to see and hear, and the fiddler was talented.    

view from hotel room in Killarney

On a cold & sunny Sunday, at 12:30 pm, I boarded a non-stop train to Dublin, and saw a lot of green fields with horses and  trees arrayed in fall color. An older Irish woman came through our car trying to locate her husband and had people laughing at her sarcastic comments, but as soon as she found him, she became silent.

Back at Heuston Station, I enjoyed another NERO coffee break. Natural lighting & a relaxed atmosphere prevailed, with Victorian architecture all around. 

Around 4 pm, I was on a cab to Camden Court Hotel, and after checking in, found (or heard) Doris, Mary & Roger, in the lobby/mezzanine restaurant, right behind me, having drinks with a few friends. All of them were de-compressing from a 10-day bus tour, with 120 people, enjoying the first few hours of being 'free birds'....I took my luggage up to a room and was back in 15 minutes.   

Mary & Roger left to attend The Elders last concert, somewhere nearby, while Doris & I had dinner with her friends Sandra & Lee. Lee was a good conversationalist, with a scientific background, and we hit it off well. Doris & Sandra were equally engaged. 

Outside on Camden, it was a cold, rainy October Sunday night, and pedestrians with umbrellas & cars with headlights streamed by, a blur of lights & colors.  

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Postscript - about Legendary Antarctic Explorer, Irishman Tom Crean: (feel free to skip if uninterested)

While (British) Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton are best known among Antarctic explorers, Irishman Tom Crean was a key member who worked for both of them. He survived the failed Scott attempt on the South Pole in 1911/12, when Scott's (5-man) Polar team all perished, while returning, having reached the summit, one month after Norwegian Roald Amundsen had accomplished being the first one there.     

Tom Crean was in the final support group for Scott's 'summit' team, reluctantly ordered to turn back, on the Polar Plateau and only 150 miles from the South Pole. On on the 750mile walk back to Hut Point, in a three-man team, Crean became a hero for undertaking a solo 36 mile walk to save the lives of his two comrades, who were exhausted & nearly out of food/fuel, and one of the guys had a bad case of scurvy. They were only 36 miles from the Hut when they wore out.

Crean only had three biscuits and two chocolate sticks for food, and walked for 18 hours. When he arrived at the Hut, he gave his report about the stranded guys & collapsed. Within 30 minutes, a fierce 48-hour blizzard commenced and Crean certainly would have perished, so it was a very close call !   

After the blizzard ended, two guys from the Scott Expedition Hut went out by dog sled and rescued the two stranded guys. Anecdotal info says one of the dogs rushed into the tent & began licking their faces, when they were first found.    

Tom Crean's most impressive exploit occurred in 1914-16, when Shackleton's ship Endurance was frozen in for 15 months, finally crushed by the unforgiving sea ice surrounding Antarctica, and sank, another failed polar attempt.

The 28 person crew only had three lifeboats and they somehow made it via open-ocean voyage to Elephant Island, a journey of 150 miles. Twenty-two men were then left behind and the most sea-worthy vessel was reinforced and six crew members, including Ernest Shackleton, Frank Worsley, and Tom Crean, took off for an open boat voyage of 800 miles (via dead reckoning) and thankfully Worsley was an expert navigator.

They were in search of the miniscule South Atlantic island of Georgia, their last hope in saving 28 lives. 

Once they landed on South Georgia a difficult 36-mile hike up and over impressive mountains brought them to the only whaling station that far south. In the end all expedition members survived, a near impossibility.

Tom Crean, like Ernest Shackelton, became 'the stuff of legend'.  But poor Shackleton soon died of a coronary, at the start on his last trip to Antarctica in 1922. His wife wired for him to be buried on Georgia Island, where he most wanted to be.   

After his Antarctic expeditions, Kerryman Crean resumed service in the British Navy, in the end for a total of 27 years. His polar exploits had earned him many accolades & promotions and he had a rewarding career, and, a decent pension. (He also had earned two of England's most prestigious medals for his contributions to Royal Navy Expeditions.)    

Back in Anascaul, near Dingle, where he grew up, the retired Tom Crean opened the South Pole Pub,in a house he bought next to the attractive Anascaul River bridge, with three stone arches.

His wife had grown up in a Publican family, so she ran the business, while Tom hung out by the river, smoked his pipe & talked to people all day. Locals say he rarely spoke of his Antarctic adventures, and, he was often singing Gaelic songs. He was also known to take long walks with his dogs, in the hills above Anascaul. 

The South Pole Pub is still there, and generations of Creans are buried in the surrounding area.

(Crean info ref. - see the Bibliography page.

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