Stranded in Kenmare
By Daniel Rice
24 June 2008
Stranded in Kenmare is not a bad place to be. The town is quaint and tidy. The buildings are all painted in fantastic pastels. In fact, its won Ireland's Tidy Town Award for several years running. But quaintness and awards are not what makes the town special. What makes Kenmare special and not a bad place to be stranded is that it is situated on the Ring of Kerry, a rural wonderland of fantastic light.
I wanted to travel the Ring of Kerry loop, but I was in Ireland during October, the beginning of the tourist off season. Doing the trip on the cheap, I did not have a rental car. The tour buses that crowd the roads during the summer were not running, nor were the tour taxis running on a regular schedule. It was as if the entire tourist industry had shut down. I tried to rent a bike on a couple of occasions at a local convenience store, but the store only had two bikes that were always rented out.
What was I to do? Kenmare is a lovely town, but you can see the whole place in five minutes by foot. Determined to make the most of my time, I purchased a slender volume called Six easy walks of Killarney and Kenmare by Daimen Enright at the local tourist information center. It was the best purchase I made the entire trip. With the book and my misguided sense of direction as my guides, I lost myself on the county roads of West Cork, a bucolic land where you can walk for miles with only a few sheep and cows for company.
1 response
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Tina Smith said (19 May 2009):
definatly voted yes for this story....love all the captures
