Without fail, whenever I plan a trip, my favorite parts are the ones I never planned for;Â for someone who loves to plan, that’s saying something. The Ring of Kerry was something I had no idea about until, in a fit of planning mania, I decided to map out our driving routes for the entire trip and stumbled upon what everyone else apparently already knew: Green Bits. And not just any green bits… these were the kinds you see in movies and in postcards. I didn’t buy any–I was too busy snapping pictures of my own.
I had been driving since the beginning of the trip, so I didn’t mind at all when the CYF volunteered to drive this portion of the route… especially because it was rumored to be fairly high and cliff-like. I got to sit in the back seat and stare from the window as she attempted to stay on the wrong side of the road and avoid hitting mirrors. (She did an excellent job, by the way.)
The Ring of Kerry usually takes nearly a whole day to drive; as we were hitting it on the way to our next destination, we decided to only do the top portion, from Killarney to Valentia Island. Along the way, we passed through a town that crowns a goat king every August, which reminded me of some of my favorite sections of A Year in Provence, a favorite of mine that details one man’s love affair with my favorite country.
We stopped at a viewpoint where we could climb a path through the trees…
… to where we could reach a point that overlooked even more hills and even more green.
And then we piled back into the car and drove for miles and miles of nothing but green.
I had a creeping feeling that it should have been growing monotonous, that I should have been growing tired of all of the trees and grass and hills everywhere…
… but somehow…
… it just didn’t happen. For some reason.
Then, just when I thought that the drive couldn’t get any more beautiful, the CYF pulled to the side of the road behind a tour bus, to where there was a small cliff overlooking the sea.
I stood with my feet at the edge, staring down at the rocks and the crystal water, and I couldn’t help myself: I laughed out loud.
I believe this may have frightened the CYF, the Engineer and King Kong, but they were nice enough not to say anything about my apparent verdent-induced psychosis.
That said, we did start to look for somewhere to stop and eat along the way.
Alongside some cows.
And when we’d eaten our fill of our usual hummus, vegetables and endless ham sandwiches, we made good on our real reason for stopping…
Homemade ice cream. With milk from the cows we ate next to. It doesn’t get fresher than that.
The boy working behind the counter looked as though he had never been more bored in his life. While I don’t blame him–it’s not a very populated location–I wonder if he may have forgotten to look at what was around him. I know that as I ate my ice cream cone–peach, if you were wondering–I leaned against a stone wall and soaked up the green. I don’t know if I would ever be able to forget being surrounded by something so incredibly, naturally beautiful.
