Waterville to Caherdaniel

The weather condtions for today are the best to date on this trip. Sunshine and warm. This is THE real Irish summer. First, we visited Waterville, a nice small waterfront resort, which was already visited by such famous people as Charlie Chaplin. He came here every summer with his family.

Waterville is also famous for the first Transatlantic Cable, which was laid from here to Canada. On this part of the coast of Kerry, there were several cable stations.

We followed the path out of town and after some km, finally, we could see both, Skellig Michael and the smaller Skellig island. The islands are famous for several reasons. On the smaller island, there are about 50'000 gannets breeding there. You can also find the famous puffins and a lot of other birds. Skellig Michael was once inhabited by monks, who built an abbey on top of it. It is now a World Heritage Site. But is another more recent reason, why Skellig Michael is famous for: it was used several times as location for the Star Wars movies. This may also be the reason why it is such a popular destination right now.

We had to get over a mountain pass in order to get to the other side of the valley. From here, we could see the Brea Peninsula, the third peninsula after Dingle and Kerry. We decided to leave the Kerry Way and followed a path that led us directly to the beach. From here the path became a wonderful and beautiful costal path. There were many people on the beaches. No wonder as the temperature went up to 24C.

At the end of the path, we came through the home of Daniel O'Connell, who became the first liberator of the Irish people in the beginning of the 19th century.

From here we only had to cover some 3 more km to get to the destination of today, the olde Forge.Read more