Dawn and Kevin

After another fabulous breakfast thanks to Brian, we reluctantly packed up the car, sad to leave Dingle, but excited for our journey to see the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare.  Kevin chose to wear one of his Soundgarden t-shirts, and as he carried bags out to the car, he ran into another guest at Castlewood who noticed his shirt.  They had a nice conversation about Soundgarden, and of course, Pearl Jam, and then we were ready to hit the road. This was going to be one of our longest drives, getting from Dingle up to the Cliffs of Moher in Liscannor would take us close to 4 hours.

Here is a short video of our drive out of County Kerry.

While researching our trip, I visited a lot of Irish travel forums.  It was on one of these that I learned about the Tarbert-Killimer Ferry, a ferry that crosses the Shannon River, getting us from County Kerry to County Clare, and would save us a lot of driving time as we’d miss the traffic in Limerick.  Sounded good to me!  We programmed the GPS for the ferry and made it there quickly.

We got in line for the ferry, there were perhaps 10 cars ahead of us, and we waited.  We got out of the car to stretch our legs and noticed a truck pull up with a horse carrier that parked in the lot next to the road.  After a few minutes, the driver let the horse out and led him on a long rope to the water.  Was he going to drink?  Nope.  We watched as the horse walked into the water and started swimming.  I hopped back into the car to get the camera, but we missed the beginning of his swim.  The video is kind of shaky but it was so fun to watch this horse enjoying himself so much in the water.

We watched the horse having fun in the water and then it was time to get onto the ferry.

The ferry trip was fun.  We actually got splashed with water while on the side of the boat, even though the river seemed to be calm. Here are some photos we took while on it.

After we got off the ferry we followed our GPS’s directions and ended up on the narrowest road we’d ever driven on in Ireland.  It was barely wide enough for one car, yet it was a two way road… grass was growing in the middle of the road, we were incredibly happy that we only had to drive on it for about 4 miles or so.  Perhaps it might have been the most direct route to our destination, but it was certainly not the most traveled. I was thrilled once we saw overhead electric wires in the distance and other vehicles.  We truly were in the middle of nowhere and though it was nerve wracking at the time, it was a fabulous experience.

One of the seaside towns we passed through on the way to the Cliffs of Moher was Quilty. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking, the sea was an incredible deep blue.  We needed to pull over and take photos.  Here are a few of them.