Ireland Road Trip Part 5 Valentia Island.

In the morning after leaving Camp we headed on towards Cahersiveen our next stop for two nights. On the way we saw a sign to Valentia Island and decided to take a trip across the bridge. There is also a ferry but that is only in operation during the summer months. Valentia Island is one of Ireland's most westerly points and lies off the Iveragh peninsula adjacent to the Ring of Kerry. It was also the eastern terminus of the first commercially viable transatlantic telegraph cable.

The old slate quarry.

Grotto at the quarry. I don't know what the white pentagon is. It wasn't visible to either of us when I took the photo!

Slate everywhere!

Even the rocks on the beach were the same colour as the slate.

After a walk along the rocky beach we drove back over the bridge into Portmagee,

Memorial to those who lost their lives in the local waters.

The gulls seemed to know there was more bad weather on the way and were flocking close to shore. (Sorry Tabbies!)

And so we continued on to check in to our home for the next two nights.

Ireland Road Trip Part 4 Camp Junction, Dingle Peninsula.

After the hurricane of the day before we made an early start for the Dingle peninsula as we now would only have one day there instead of two.
The scenery was beautiful from the sea to the mountains and moorland, so we stopped several times to admire the views and take short walks.

We got to Camp Junction where we would be staying but as the weather was so nice we decided to drive around the peninsula first.
We saw a sign to Derrymore Beach and decided to take a longer stop there.

Driftwood washed in by the storm.

Such lovely views. Who would have thought that a hurricane had hit Ireland the day before!

We went inland across the dingle peninsula so we could go through the Connor Pass (An Chonair)

This road brought us back to Camp Junction and the bed and breakfast where we were staying.

The view from our window.

Not far to the pub for a Guinness!

View from the B&B car park.

It really was a pity that we only had one night here as it was such a lovely spot.

It was time to head on to  Cahersiveen.

Ireland Road Trip Part 3 Adare, Hazelwood Country House B&B.

The bed and breakfast we stayed at in Adare was a beautiful house with lovely grounds which we could walk around.

Everything was so quiet and relaxed, then Ophelia arrived.
Ophelia was the worst storm to hit Ireland resulting in almost 400,000 people losing power on a relatively small island.
The day of the storm we were due to move on to our next bed and breakfast on the Dingle peninsula but the police were telling everyone to stay at home.
As we couldn't leave, the people who would have had our room couldn't get there either so we were able to keep the room for an extra night.

As I was looking out of the window I saw the tree outside blown over.
There were trees and power lines down everywhere, but as soon as the storm eased the local farmers moved the trees to get the roads open again.
Next morning everything was calm and the sun was shining so we were able to travel on to our next destination.
We didn't know it then, but there was another storm waiting to hit two days later.

Ireland Road Trip Part 2 Adare, Second Day

On our second day in Adare we decided to drive to Killaloe and Lough Derg Shannon.

The swan was hoping we had brought food but was out of luck.

Lough Derg is the third largest lough in Ireland.

Killaloe

Ballina across the bridge