The Black Lung Gets the Seal of Approval, Part 4: Retreading Ground is Fun if you are in Ireland

If you are an avid reader of The Black Lung, you may recall that I visited Dingle with my friend Niki about 7 years ago, and it was great. So when Leah asked if there was anything in particular I wanted to do in Ireland, I brought up Dingle immediately. To get there, we got to drive through some more picturesque countryside, a thing Ireland has in abundance. We stopped at Inch Beach, which is apparently a place where many people surf. I do not see the appeal of surfing, plus it was kind of cold, in spite of being August, so we didn't go in the water at all, but we did hang out, which was nice.

Inch Beach! Believe it on not, we did see people in the water.

 

The remains of a random tower house that we found by following road signs for a castle. There were no trespassing signs all over this, and for reals it looked unsafe but picturesque.

 

The tower house beach.
 
The colors were breathtaking. We went at a good time of year for everything to look super great.

When we got to Dingle, we discovered that our AirbNb was seriously centrally located in the town. And also a very strange little house. The whole bathroom is basically the shower. There's a drain in the floor, but no door or curtain or even raised lip of tub or anything to separate it from the rest of the bathroom. It was actually kind of neat, but I did worry about my clothes getting wet. Thankfully, they did not.

When you go to Dingle, the one thing that absolutely everyone does is go out into the bay to see Fungie the Dolphin. He has lived in Dingle Bay since 1983, and the tourist industry in the town is very centered on him. Frankly, he was an old dolphin 7 years ago when I saw him, and now he's a very old dolphin. A lot of people wonder what the town will do when he inevitably shuffles off this mortal coil. It will be very sad, that's for sure. But if you go there and he's still around, you should see him. We checked out different options at the harbor and decided to go for the boat tour to the Great Blasket Island. Also you may remember that Niki and I went to a museum about that island and it's native inhabitants, and I became somewhat fascinated with them, so I was excited to go although a bit nervous about becoming seasick, especially because we would be on the boat for at least 2 hours of our trip. Leah was not worried about being seasick, because the same things that make me want to barf make her feel alive. Bodies are very strange.

Fungie! He doesn't jump around anymore, but he was still very visible and present.

 

To get to the Great Blasket Island, you have to sail out of Dingle Bay and start around the penninsula. Niki and I drove around it on Slea Head Drive (which I recommend if you don't go out on a boat). While we were still in the bay, we sailed around a bit until we saw Fungie himself! He's still very cool. Once we left the bay, the sea became extremely rough. The waves were huge and horrible, we got splashed all to heck, and my fear of seasickness was fully realized. It was both scary and stomach churning. Leah had a really great time. I can see that it would be pretty fun if you didn't feel like you were about to throw up.

 

One of our views as we sailed to the island. You can't tell how choppy the water was, but you can see that the sky was both cloudy and menacing.

Smiling through the pain! Except Leah, who was thrilled.

 

After about an hour, we finally reached the Great Blasket Island. It's actually the largest in a small group of Islands called the Blaskets. There are six main islands, and people have lived on at least 3 of them at some time or other. The main settlement was on the Great Blasket Island, though. The last people left the island in the 1950s. The remains of their village is still there, as well as a little cafe and airbnb. The only people who live there now are people who run the business, and I'm pretty sure they are not considered permanent residents. Around the time we got to the island, the weather cleared up, so we had a good opportunity to explore. We were taken over to the dock on a rubber dinghy in groups, then given about an hour and a half to explore the island. I would have loved to spend more time there. The ruins are neat, the cafe had snacks and sold books (the island, despite being very small, had a robust literary tradition), and the views are unreal. There are still sheep on the island, I assume from some mainland shepherds, and we also saw jackrabbits. The island used to be a huge home to different seabird colonies, including puffins, but those populations still haven't totally returned since they were pretty heavily hunted by the inhabitants, especially during hard times like the potato famine. Hopefully they'll come back eventually though. We hiked all around and didn't fall into any random cracks in the earth or off any cliffs, so that was a relief. We did see some people arrive at the island to camp on the beach, which does not sound fun to me because camping. A few months after we were there, there was a call for people to apply to live there for a while and run the cafe and the airbnb, and that was tempting, I tell you what.

Approaching the Island. The white buildings you can see are the cafe, the AirbNb, and I think where the employees live. Everything else is ruins.

  

The docks, with our boat in the background.

  

Heading up the steep path to the top.

  

The path through the ruins. It's amazing to think that people lived in such small cottages as recently as the 1950s. 

  

Leah was also there!

  

View towards the mainland.

  

Everything was so beautiful. I imagine it was sad for the islanders to leave, even though their way of life was so hard.

  

View from the cafe. You can see our tiny little boat on the right hand side of the picture.

  

Be careful where you step! These unexpected drops were all over the island.

 

A closer view of ruins. I wondered how everything had fallen apart so quickly, but in my reading of The Islander, I learned that they had to redo the roofs of their houses every year, so I guess it's not surprising.

  

One of the many amazing views we saw as we hiked around. We didn't even make it halfway around the island. So I know there were many more amazing views that we didn't have time to see.

 

We took a picture when we had to turn around-look how much more island there was to explore!

 When our time was up, we went back to the boat and sailed around the end of the island and saw seals! Many, many seals! That's one kind of wildlife that hasn't been scared away by humans. They were neat and also very loud. We also saw some seabirds that I can't identify. Then we sailed back to Dingle. Thankfully, the weather was a lot more pleasant on the way back than on the way out. The sun was out and the sea was a lot calmer. And we saw Fungie again when we were in the bay!

Seals! Those dark spots in the water are their little heads sticking up.

 

If you enlarge this picture, you can see some kind of seabirds on this tiny rocky island.

 

Farewell to the Great Blasket Island! I hope I can go back someday.

  

Look how different our view was on the way back to Dingle! What a difference some clouds make.

 

That evening, we met up with Leah's friends who were also randomly in Ireland at the same time as us and they took us to dinner! It was really nice of them, and they were fun to hang out with. We learned a funny thing, which is that pretty much everything at the restaurant we went to came with fries. For instance, I had a chicken curry, and it totally came with fries. I also got some sticky toffee pudding, which made me happy.

 

It's traditional to get your picture taken with the Fungie statue when you're in Dingle. 

 The library in Dingle! Alas, it was not open.

The next morning, we went around Dingle and did some shopping for a while. This is a great place to buy souvenirs for people. And it's an amazingly cute town, even with all the touristy things. On the way out of Dingle, we took a scenic mountain road recommended by Leah's friends. It was amazingly beautiful and also amazingly scary. It was a very skinny road! And very high up! Since we didn't die, I'd say the views were totally worth it. We were headed to our next destination, another place I had been before, The Cliffs of Moher! The Cliffs are very famous, but it's for a good reason! They're neat. You may recognize them from such movies as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Princess Bride. Since going to the cliffs was our only plan for the day, we decided to live a little and check out any sort of fun stuff along the way. So when we saw a sign for a castle, we followed it into town, which turned out to be Newcastle West (also known as plain old Newcastle, but that's also the name of other towns, including one in Northern Ireland, which is a little confusing.) The castle there is Desmond Hall and Castle, and it's actually the remains of a much bigger castle complex that was originally built in the 1200s, then destroyed and rebuilt over the years. What's currently there is from the 1400s. Of the original giant complex, there's still a small visitor's center, some ruins, part of a wall, and a small actual castle. Best thing about it-the tour was free! Huzzah! We learned quite a bit about the history of the town and the castle, but frankly, I procrastinated writing this and have forgotten much. It was neat though. And after we left and ran to Subway in the rain to get lunch, our tour guide was also there getting her lunch.

 

Your eyes do not deceive you-this is a one lane road with rock walls on the side. At one point, we had to back up to a slight shoulder to let someone pass. Stressful!

 

But look at this amazing view! You can't get all the good views without a little danger. 

 

We stopped along the scary road at one wide section to get a better look at the amazing views.

  

The castle! The little statue there in front has no reins, which signified something about the Normans, I think, but I don't remember what.

Me being confused about why he has no reins.

 For some reason, they let us climb up to the top of the castle. Scary stuff. Leah liked it, of course. To be fair, not nearly as horrible as the Round Tower at St. Canice's Cathedral.

 The view that overlooks the town square. Apparently this is a very English looking square, probably because of the Norman guy with no reins.

 We are the chairpeople of the castle!

A closeup so you can see how cute we are.

After lunch, we were really on our way! If I'm recalling correctly, this was one of our longest driving days, but luckily, most of the views were beautiful and excellent, which really helps a drive seem not too bad.When we got to the cliffs, the weather was not great, which is to say, it was very rainy. This was kind of nice actually, because it meant a lot of people left and things weren't super crowded. But it was also sad because we got very wet.  A lot of fog rolled in, too, which made things both very hard to see and very awesome looking at the same time. I know it's a total tourist destination (according to the website, it's the top tourist attraction in the country), but if you go to Ireland, you really should check it out. You'll be able to see the strange but true unisex bathrooms! You can walk along cliffs that are so high you will feel uncomfortable! You may be able to see puffins! I did not see them either time I went, but I live in hope. We did hike around in the rain, trying to see as much as we possibly could while also not slipping in mud and falling to our doom. It was great.

The Cliffs of Insanity! I am 99% positive I made the same joke on my last blog about visiting the Cliffs of Moher. 

It was full on raining in this picture. Observe the water droplets.

I tried to follow the instructions, but it seems like a bad idea.

More seabirds! All those white specks are birds. This is supposedly where you can sometimes see puffins, but it was probably the wrong time of year and definitely too foggy.

The fog has started to roll in.

It's getting more intense.

Fog has overtaken everything. Squint really hard and you can make the cliffs out. This is about when we gave up.

And then we were off to our next airbnb. This one was hard to find-they didn't live in a town, but kind of in the middle of nowhere, so we couldn't just follow GPS. We didn't get too lost though, and the views from their house were amazing. And they had a sweet dog who let me pet her. Also, not gonna lie, the breakfast the lady made us the next morning was next level delicious. Why don't I ever have fresh mozzarella at breakfast? Why am I limiting my life so much???

Next Time, on The Black Lung: We venture into another country and have some issues with speed limits.