Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Nearby: If you are interested in those tetrapods, the actual “first footprints” are a
15-minute drive from the museum, on a rugged bit of rocky shoreline, a 10-minute hike
below a parking lot (free, always viewable, get details locally).
Cahergal and Leacanabuaile Ring Forts
Crowning bluffs in farm country, 2.5 miles (4 km) off the main road at Cahersiveen, these
two windy and desolate forts are each different and worth a look. Just beyond the Cahers-
iveen town church at the tourist office, turn left, cross the narrow bridge, turn left again,
and follow signs to the ancient forts—you'll see the huge stone structures in the distance.
You'll hike 10 minutes from the tiny parking lot (free, always open, no museum). Both
forts are roughly 100 yards off the road (uphill on the right) and are 200 yards from each
other. For details, see “The Ring Forts of Kerry” sidebar, earlier.
Skellig Michael
A trip to this jagged, isolated pyramid—the Holy Grail of Irish monastic island settle-
ments—rates as a truly memorable ▲▲▲ experience. After visiting Skellig Michael a
hundred years ago, Nobel Prize-winning Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw called it
“the most fantastic and impossible rock in the world.”
Rising seven miles offshore, the Skelligs (Gaelic for “splinter”) are two gigantic slate-
and-sandstone rocks crouched aggressively on the ocean horizon. The larger of the two,
Skellig Michael, is more than 700 feet tall and a mile around, with a tiny cluster of aban-
doned beehive huts clinging near its summit like stubborn barnacles. The smaller island,
Little Skellig, is home to a huge colony of gannet birds (like large, graceful seagulls with
six-foot wingspans), protected by law from visitors setting foot onshore.
Skellig Michael (dedicated to the archangel) was first inhabited by sixth-century Chris-
tian monks. Inspired by earlier hermit-monks in the Egyptian desert, they sought the purity
of isolation to get closer to God. Neither Viking raids nor winter storms could dislodge
them, as they patiently built a half-dozen small, stone, igloolike dwellings and a couple of
tiny oratories. Their remote cliff-terrace perch is still connected to the sea 600 feet below
by an amazing series of rock stairs. Viking Olav Trygvasson, who later became king of
Norway and introduced Christianity to his country, was baptized here in 956.
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