ireland

Please join us in welcoming renowned travel author David Yeadon to The Window Seat. He is the author of several travel books, including his latest At the Edge of Ireland. His guest blog reveals his top travel tips for Ireland's Beara Peninsula.

If you’ve ever been charmed by twinkle-eyed Irish raconteurs, dreamed of hikes across wild mountains and moors, or imagined yourself at a Guinness-primed ceili in an authentic Irish village pub, then you would love the Beara Peninsula, a remote mountainous finger of land in the southwest corner of Ireland that juts out thirty miles into the Atlantic.

My wife Anne and I spent a good part of a year here bathed in its bounteous charms and researching my latest travel book At The Edge of Ireland. For this is indeed an enticing Brigadoon of soaring mountain ranges and spectacular coastal scenery, far removed from the tourist hullabaloo of Dublin, Killarney, and the Ring of Kerry. Here is the fabled “Old Ireland,” alive and well with music seisuins, hooley dances, and seanachai storytellers—a haven for searchers, healers, artists, and poets hardy enough to brave the same narrow and winding mountain roads that keep the package-tour coaches out.

A trip to the Beara Peninsula takes a little more work than planning a trip to Dublin but it’s well worth the effort. And there are delightful scenic compensations too. The 240 mile drive to Beara from Dublin offers side jaunts into such historic cities as Wexford, Waterford, and Cork as well as a string of smaller (and very colorful) coastal towns—Cobh, Kinsale, Skibbereen, and Bantry. If you fly into Shannon (Limerick) the drive south is only around 90 miles with less distractions except of course, the ultra-chic and ultra-popular tourist haven of Killarney.

Once on the switchbacking roads of Beara, you enter this magic hidden corner of southwest Ireland dotted with brightly painted villages and enticing pubs and restaurants (O’Neill’s in Allihies and MacCarthy’s in the ‘capital’ town of Castletownbere are must-sees). Castletownbere also offers a handful of B&Bs, two larger hotels—Beara Bay and Cametringame—and modern, fully equipped rental cottages. The two towns at the eastern entry points to the peninsula, Glengarriff and Kenmare, offer more upmarket hotels and restaurants, as does Killarney, 20 miles to the north of Kenmare.

If super-splurges are on your agenda, then Kenmare’s two bastions of ultimate international luxury should suffice: Park Hotel Kenmare and Sheens Fall Lodge.

So, as an armchair reader or an on-the-road traveler, I invite you to join me in discovering the magnificence of this unique corner of Ireland. Sláinte! For more information see Beara Tourism and Beara Info.

 

David Yeadon is the author of Seasons on Harris, Seasons in Basilicata, and the bestselling National Geographic Guide to the World’s Secret Places. He has written, illustrated, and designed more than twenty books about travel around the world. He and his wife live in Mohegan Lake, New York.