Valentia Island in the Foggy Mist

Morning came and brought with it a thick fog and misty rain.

The view outside our hotel room window

We of course had a full irish breakfast and then it was off to Valentia Island, a small Island town off the coast of Kerry. It was a beautiful drive despite the rain. We drove past fields of turf which was used, and still used by some, as the main source of heating fuel for their stoves. Its pretty much just an open bog full of light brown looking turf, nothing special. Once we got to Valentia Island we stopped a beautiful site where the first cable across the Atlantic landed in Ireland. The view from this point was absolutely incredible and I'm sure it would have been even nicer if it wasn't so rainy.

We then headed to Fogher Cliff where we could climb up the tallest "mountain" (but really it was a hill, the Irish like to call them mountains though) to a lookout point of the island. The guy who talked to us Friday night actually owned the mountain because he wanted to raise sheep. But then the sheep industry collapsed and he had to make money from the mountain another way. So he built a road going up to the top with four lookout points and charges a small fee per car to access the mountain. His farm is mainly a dairy farm so of course he has baby cows.

Baby cow sucking on Maggie's finger

After obsessing over the cute baby cows we turned our attention to the task at hand: walking up the hill to the first look out point... in the fog. We weren't able to go all the way up to the top unfortunately because it was too foggy. But it was a nice steep walk up hill for about 10ish minutes with sheep running across the road and white blocking the landscape... something like this....

Every time we got near the sheep, they'd run as if we were gonna catch it and eat right there. I just wanted to cuddle with one! That's all!

Just over that hill in the picture above, the fog cleared a little and we can see what was beyond the edge of the mountain.

of course there's more sheep!

The view as always... was stunning. I'm beginning to realize that no matter where you go in Ireland every where is beautiful and different. The water was rough and crashed against the rocks on the edge of the land. The shocking part to me was how turquoise the water was, normally back home when it's cloudy and rough the water is like a deep grey. We walked a bit further and rounded a bend to this view: 

yay group photo!

 We trekked back, took a lot more pictures, and chased some more sheep. Once on the bus we drove around the island a bit... we saw more green hills and more sheep (I even spotted The Loneliest Sheep. He was standing in a giant field all by himself with no other sheep around.. and i got a picture of him but he won't show up on this post, he's too small).


The last stop before we arrived back at the hotel for lunch was... The Beach!! That's right, we went to the beach in February in the rain and had a blast. The water once again was so cool, it felt like we were on some tropical island of some sort. Of course there was a ruin of a castle or something on the beach, it wouldn't be Ireland if it didn't have a ruin. I think there was a bigger castle further to the right but it was too rainy and cold to trek over there. I know you must be thinking it doesn't look like it's raining, but it was definitely precipitating more than a light mist. Also glad I bought my lovely new rain boots because the water splashed up one too many times without me realizing.

Talk about a long day, after lunch at the hotel we went to see two stone forts in the area. They were pretty cool. They had stairs built in to the stone sides so you can climb up to the top and see 360 for miles.

standing on the highest point on the wall

My favourite part of the trip to the forts had to be when I looked at the map and realized that Ballycarbery Castle was so close. The castle (for those that don't know) was mentioned in my favourite movie Leap Year. I didn't know it was an actual castle though I thought they did some Hollywood trickery on that. I mean they did anyway by putting it on a massive hill in  Tipperary but it's not made up! It is in fact sitting right on the edge of the atlantic in Cahersiveen, Kerry on anything but a hill. I'm a bit bummed we couldn't go over and take a look at it but maybe I'll save that for another day.

There she is in all her glory

Then it was back to the hotel, inhaled dinner, and listened to a gaelic footballer Maurice Fitzgerald talk about the sport. It's basically like soccer and football combined. You can't run with the ball in your hands for more than four steps, you either have to pass it our drop it and kick it back up to yourself. I'd be miserable at the sport.

And to close out the night, we played a bit of pub trivia. Most of the questions were things from our trip while some were fun like "who is the female singer to the Black Eyed Peas".... thanks to Trevor screaming "FERGIE!!" we can safely assume everyone got that one haha. My team surprisingly came in second. I walked away with two Valencia slate coasters, they're really cool I swear, and enjoyed a celebratory pint of Carlsberg.