Dingle Peninsula Gaeltacht, County Kerry

Her Ladyship has been polishing her tiara for the past few days. It appears we are going to visit the Kingdom. The Kingdom of Kerry, that is.

We are staying in the county capital of Tralee and even in this large country town of over 20,000 inhabitants, the welcome and hospitality is second to none. We are greeted on the street by every second passer-by as if we were old friends, and the locals go out of their way to offer help or guidance. It appears that, in the Kingdom, they treat you like royalty!

But none of us can wait to get out of town and set off to explore Dingle Peninsula. His Lordship has never been to Kerry before and Her Ladyship is particularly anxious to revisit the village she stayed in for a month one summer, decades ago. (She won’t let me write the exact date… as if we didn’t already know that she’s ancient!) She was sent down there on the train from Dublin, along with two brothers and three bicycles, under strict instructions to polish up her Irish. The village of Feohanagh is in the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking) area of the peninsula and consisted back then of a school, a shop/house where Her Ladyship and other students stayed with a local family, and a céilí hall. She remembers that the fear an tí (man of the house) didn’t have a single word of English, most of the furniture in the house was homemade, and there was only one bathroom with one toilet in the house for the 16 occupants (family of nine plus seven students). Cosy!

In spite of the spartan living conditions, Her Ladyship still has very fond memories of her stay and she was delighted to see Feohanagh village and beach again. The village has apparently grown beyond recognition, but the beach and surroundings are as beautiful and unspoiled as they were 43 years ago. Ooops, I just let the cat out of the bag!

I know we are on the ‘Emerald Isle’, but Kerry is the ‘Emerald and Gold’ county at the moment – lush green countryside covered with golden yellow gorse. Very fitting indeed, as emerald and gold are the county’s colours – the colours worn by the Gaelic Games teams.

In fact, the whole county is ablaze with colour. The skies are grey and the sea a steely black at times, but every so often a ray of sunshine breaks through the cloud cover and throws a brilliant spotlight on a pink farmhouse, a brown cliff face, masses of yellow daffodils, the white Atlantic surf, the golden sands of a beach… Even the sheep have blue or red paint splotches on their fleeces. The towns and villages are festooned with GAA (Gaelic games) flags and bunting, and the houses and shops are painted deep purple, scarlet red, bright orange, canary yellow, fluorescent green. It sounds horrific, but I love it, and I reckon that cheerful colours are a sign of cheerful people!

Time and again we are bowled over by the stunning scenery. If the roads weren’t so narrow and winding, I think His Lordship would be pulling the car over every five minutes to take it all in. We do stop off whenever we can – to visit the ancient monastic church, Gallarus Oratory, to gaze out from Slea Head at the beautiful Blasket Islands, to take a look at the famous Beehive Huts, to visit the villages of Dunquin (where the Hollywood movies ‘The Quiet Man’ and ‘Far and Away’ were filmed) and Annascaul (birthplace of the Antarctic explorer, Tom Crean) and the town of Dingle.

In Dingle, Her Ladyship is acting the right tourist, snapping away with her mobile phone. An elderly gentleman who is just getting into his car, says to her, without preamble, ‘Do you want to take my photo?’ A few minutes later they are bidding each other a fond farewell, having established that his daughter lives just down the road from where Her Ladyship used to live in Dublin, and that he is a close acquaintance of the family she stayed with in Feohanagh and he has been able to fill her in on what they have all been up to since 1974.

Only in Ireland!