Ireland, Part 4 (On the Water)

I enjoy boat rides. Ireland is surrounded by water. Is it surprising that I found myself cruising over the waves? No of course not. However, I didn’t expect it to happen four times during my trip even if a couple of those were fleeting encounters.


Skellig Michael

Skellig Michael ranked high on my list of priorities as I planned the trip. A skellig is a rock, in this instance the Rock of Michael, mirroring the Irish language Sceilig Mhichíl. Skellig Michael and its sister Little Skellig jutted sharply from the Atlantic Ocean. They sat about a dozen kilometres from the Iveragh Peninsula (map). While just a stone’s throw from the famous Ring of Kerry and its tourist busloads, Skellig Michael stood a world apart. It took effort to get there and even more effort to climb it.

Irish authorities severely limited access to this fragile UNESCO World Heritage Site. Only small boats could dock at Skellig Michael. Additionally, only a handful of licenses were awarded each year to charter operators working primarily from Portmagee. This limited visitors to about 150 people per day give-or-take, and only in the summer months when ocean swells calmed sufficiently. Even that could be a crapshoot. We had to reschedule our original reservation the first time. Authorities scrubbed the five days leading up to it due to high waves. The island caretakers wouldn’t let boats land there in perceptively dangerous conditions.

So why would anyone want to go to Skellig Michael? Lousy weather, seasickness, expense and inconvenience were all possibilities. These were all offset by the actual experience. Thus, the difficulty of the journey only enhanced the rewards.

Puffins

Skellig Michael puffin colony. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The two Skelligs, out by themselves and surrounded by water, attracted huge colonies of birds. These included about ten thousand Atlantic Puffins on Skellig Michael, and I think many people would agree that puffins are about the cutest birds that exist. They’re like the pandas of the avian world. They also seemed to lack all fear of human visitors. We got as close to puffins on Skellig Michael as we would to pigeons in a park. They were everywhere and our kids loved them. I wouldn’t have ridden an hour on a cabin cruiser through an intermittent drizzle to a rocky shard simply for a few birds, though. They were a bonus.

A Place in History

Skellig Michael monastery. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The main attraction was the ancient monastery built high atop Skellig Michael around the 6th Century. The monks who settled here were sometimes called “white martyrs” because of their lives of suffering, deprivation and absolute devotion to their Christian faith, but without bloodshed. This must have felt like the most isolated place on earth 1,500 years ago.

We climbed the steep unprotected steps carved into the mountainside centuries before, several hundred feet up to the monastery. Soon the horizon disappeared into clouds. It seemed otherworldly as we explored through a thick fog into beehive huts constructed by those earlier monks as their crude shelters. I thought as we walked along, that it seemed like a setting out of Dungeons and Dragons or Lord of the Rings. I’ve since learned that this will be a filming location for Star Wars: Episode VII. It’s a good thing we visited Skellig Michael when we did. Reservations will become a lot more difficult once the secret gets out and Star Wars fans put it on the pilgrimage list.


Kenmare Bay

Seafari on Kenmare Bay. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The Seafari cruise out of Kenmare became our consolation prize on the day we originally planned to visit Skellig Michael and had to postpone it due to the weather. The waves were much calmer in protected Kenmare Bay (map) than the open Atlantic. So we diverted to Kenmare that morning to see the Harbor Seals instead of Portmagee to see the puffins. It’s good to be flexible.

The ship’s captain explained that a gloomy day actually worked to our advantage. Sudden movements spooked seals, and sunny days created shadows they interpreted as motions. More seals should be sitting out on the rocks when cloudy. I wasn’t sure if that was something like rain supposedly being “good luck” on a wedding day — designed to make someone feel better — or whether there was truth behind his statement. Either way, we saw plenty of seals. We even saw a few tiny pups that resided with their parents only for a brief period each Summer before striking out on their own.


Innisfallen

Innisfallen Island. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

We kept returning to a recurring theme during our journey. How do we separate ourselves from larger crowds in popular tourist destinations? Case in point, several sites in Killarney National Park just outside of the town of Killarney all drew healthy gatherings. However, Innisfallen Island (map) in the middle of the park’s Lough Leane, did not. That required a boat and most people did not want to go through the effort.

I think large excursion boats went to Innisfallen at certain times of the day. However, none of them were there when we visited. Instead, we hired a boatman to ferry us from the concession stand at nearby Ross Castle to the middle of the lake. There we climbed through the ruins of Innisfallen Abbey, founded originally in 640 and lasting through 1594. There were only two other people on the island during our brief layover. Then we got a guided tour around the lake afterwards to boot.


Valentia Island Ferry

Valentia Island Ferry. Photo by howderfamily.com; (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Our fourth journey across water involved the Valentia Island Ferry (map). I’ll talk more about that in an upcoming article so I’ll just mention it for now.


Completely Unrelated

Comment spam seems to have returned to Twelve Mile Circle. It took a nosedive a few months ago after Google started penalizing link-back schemes in its page-rank algorithms. The spammers have responded by linking back to YouTube and Yahoo Answers pages instead, and I’ve noticed a steady upswing in those tactics. Of course, I moderate every comment on 12MC and I delete spam before readers ever see it. It’s interesting to watch these cat-and-mouse games from my little corner of the world.


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  1. Many of these comments are very interesting, have enjoyed reading. We cross several times a year as well going from…