I’m in paradise… does that make me a bird-of-paradise?… No matter. Now we are continuing along another section of the Wild Atlantic Way, a 2,600 km long coastal route which runs from the Inishowen Peninsula, County Donegal, in the north down to Kinsale, County Cork, in the south. This stage is the Ring of Kerry on the Iveragh Peninsula and it feels like all my birthdays and Christmases have come at once. It is so, so beautiful and at every turn, the vast expanse of the Atlantic stretches out before us. Paradise indeed.

The ocean is home to countless species of fish, grey and common seals, dolphins, basking sharks and even whales, but along the coast, on the cliffs, rocks and islands, seabirds rule! Gulls, gannets, shearwaters, cormorants, shags, kittiwakes, fulmars, choughs… thousands and thousands of them. I’m mesmerised. The only pity is that Her sea-fearing Ladyship was not inclined to attempt a boat trip out to Puffin Island. I would so love to have met some of those cuties, otherwise known as the ‘penguins of Kerry’. We found a couple of wooden ones though…

At least we made it out to Valentia Island which is actually on the Skellig Ring. There’s a bridge from the mainland so even Her Ladyship couldn’t object. From Bray Head on the island we could see the ghostly peaks of the Skellig Islands, 12kms offshore. Shimmering in the mists, they look like something from a fantasy film. In fact, His Lordship mentions that the latest Star Wars movie, ‘The Force Awakens’, was filmed on Skellig Michael. This island is famous for its 6^th century monastic settlement, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is home to huge colonies of seabirds, including gannets and puffins, so I sure hope that those lightsabers didn’t do any damage! Of course, I have never been much of a Star Wars fan. And since I’ve come to Kerry, I rather fancy myself as Lord of the Ring.

The highlight of the Ring for me was a visit to the Kerry Cliffs. I would never have thought it possible, but these cliffs are even more spectacular than those we had visited on the west coast of Portugal. The Oldies were almost as reluctant to leave the cliffs as I was. If we ever stop travelling, this is where I want to settle, no doubt about it!

Kerry appears to be a magnet for Hollywood celebrities. The silent movie star, Charlie Chaplin, apparently holidayed regularly in Waterville for many years during the 60’s and 70’s. I tried to start a conversation, but I couldn’t get a word out of him!

Kerry by night must be amazing. Thanks to the lack of light pollution, some of the remoter parts of the county have been designated a dark sky reserve. The Kerry International Dark Sky Reserve is the only Gold Tier reserve in the Northern Hemisphere and over 4,000 stars are visible with the naked eye from here. Even for me, with my beady eyesight, that’s pretty impressive!

We sadly have to return to Dublin already, starry-eyed and longing for more of the beautiful county of Kerry. Beidh mé ar ais, or, as another famous movie star and fellow countryman of His Lordship would say, ‘I’ll be back’.