Beara Penninsula, Glenarriff, Castletownbere

We are leaving our bed and breakfast O'Shea's  in Kenmare.
Here we have the living room and fireplace where they burn either coal like this one or peat.

Kenmare

Starting the Beara Peninsula. This is considered the number 3 ring.

We chose not to go to the very end and take the "wobble cable car to the tip with the animals"

The futher we go out onto the island, the rockier it gets.  In the beginning of the ring it was dense forest.

Here in the water are about 2,000 bouys.  These are for collecting mussels.

I stopped and talked to these fisherman.
They were very kind and explained about what I was seeing and how it worked. There are about 6 of them that work together. Here is the rope that the mussels attach to.  The floating machine to the right is used to strip the mussels off the rope and collect the grown ones to sell and eat.

A wall that is just along the peninsula. It goes along with the very narrow one lane road!  Fortunately we only had  one or two cars that came by.

another beautiful view.

As we drive alone in Ireland we pass signs that say this village is a Tidy Town.  They have to have certain criteria to have this disignation. It started in 1958 with 52 towns and now they have about 700 a year that join the ranks.

This is the town of Eyeries.  This little town gets filmed alot for its colored houses. Every house is painted a bright color.

We are now coming into Castletownbere. This boat is called a life boat.

Population 850. We had lunch at Murphy's. I had crab legs. Not much here to eat but good anyway.

When we came out of from lunch we saw a lady with a big hat and fur coat walking down the street. It was the arrival of antique cars.- about 100 of them on tour.  They travel twice a year and just enjoy each other's company. David tried a Mayflower 1949.

We came into Skibbereen to go to the Famine Culture Center. Each man eats 14lbs of potatoes a day  and 55lbs for a family of six.  This was a problem when the blight hit Ireland and all the crops where being either exported or distroyed by the blight.  Here above and below is the Church Resturant that we ate at. Just beautiful. It had been set on fire in 2009 by an angry person but has been rebuilt with furniture of the period.

This is the inside.  We ate upstairs.

I put this picture in for two reasons.  One to show how small it is. I barely fit and I don't consider myself medium size.  The other reason is the flush system. The button on the right is for short flush and the bigger button on the left is for a longer flush.  I don't think I need to explain further! The buttons are all different. some are just one button just held longer..

Well we are off to Cobh tomorrow. Cheerio :-)