Saturday September 24th

We decided to have a quieter day today. We set out to drive the Gap of the Dunloe. When we got to the start we were told that the only way to see the Gap was by Pony and Trap. We decided to do this. I was so glad that my hip was better. The driver also had steps to help me get into the trap.

 

Charles asked the driver "Is the other end of the road was closed".

"No"

"So one could drive in from the other side"

"No. The end of the road is not good for driving. It will stop you."

This was like waving a red flag in front of Charles. I knew that before the day was out we would have tried driving the road.

 

Since the day was so nice we decided to continue down the middle of the peninsula in a beautiful valley. We went over the Ballaghisheen Pass. One side was agricultural and the other was more forested.

 

We stopped for lunch in Waterville at the beach park. We ate lunch looking out at the ocean and hearing the waves roar into shore. There were even Public Toilets as well. What more could we have asked for.

 

We found the circle fort Charles had seen the day before. We almost missed the turn off again. One nice thing was there were no tour busses at the site. The closer we got the more narrow the road got. There was a good parking area which was nice. This fort was different as there were rock remains of two buildings inside the fort. Again I thought if you just remained quiet you could almost hear the people carrying on their daily activities. Maybe even hear the children running around.

 

Our last stop was at Staigue Fort. Another circular stone fort. This one did not have any evidence of buildings inside of it. It was also bigger and the walls higher than the one we saw earlier. It was amazing to see the size of rocks used to build the walls.

 

Now it was time to head for the trip through Dunloe Gap. There are no signs from this side about the gap. We headed down the one lane road slowly. There was a fair bit of traffic coming out. We did not know if we would have to turn around or not. Along the way there were a few junctions with other roads. We had to decide which way we went. There were a couple of rough areas and a few very narrow parts but otherwise the road was not that bad. Soon we were in the Gap. It was very nice to see again.

 

We saw one rock formation and I asked Charles to go back for pictures. We thought we would see it again after the bend but alas we did not see it again. We wondered where it had gone. Luckily we had pictures.

 

The last part of the road was spent dodging pony and karts and oncoming cars. Charles was very happy to have driven the road.