The Day we Walked from Ballyferriter to Cuas

 The Dingle Way is a 179 km circular walking route on the Dingle Peninsula, beginning and ending in Tralee, and typically taking 8 days. We have enjoyed a 3-day curated walk, of approximately 50kms, which aims to highlight the best features of the Dingle Way. Today was our biggest, and final day. 

The weather has been perfect, culminating in a 30 degree day today, way too hot for the locals, but we Aussies were not daunted. 

We started  with a cooked breakfast at the Tigh an tSaorsaigh pub/B&B in the heart of Ballyferriter, being entertained with the life story of the breakfast chef, who regaled us with tales of her interesting life while we ate. 

All too soon however, it was time for us to move on and start our day’s walk - it was already past 9am and we were expecting to walk 15.7km today. 

We began by retracing our steps to the point where we had left the beach on Smerwick Harbour and set off along the smooth sand. It didn’t take us long to miss the first marker, which to be fair, was well above where we had chosen to walk on the harder sand. As a result, we came to a rocky section which we began to cross. It quickly became apparent though,  that this area was too vast and we began to look for a marker which would tell us to leave the beach and walk along the headland. 

We only had to backtrack a short distance to find it, and we set off again, our sights on the two prominent standing stones on the promontory ahead. Once we had reached and photographed these from all angles, we turned inland for a while before crossing a creek and popping out on another beautiful sandy beach, which would take us all the way to Murreagh. 

But first, we needed to leave the designated track to find the famous Gallarus Oratory that we had heard so much about. This required another short backtrack, as we had overshot the turning-off point. Heading in what we believed was the correct direction, we walked for at least 2 kms, before realising the app wasn’t providing us with all the correct information.   We again needed to backtrack to find a rather obscure public right of way which would take us to the Oratory. 

It was fortunate the farmer was trimming the grass and hedges from the path as we approached and we were able to ascertain we were heading in the right direction. By this time we were feeling the heat. 

We passed a 15-century tower house, known as Gallarus Castle, which appeared to be in the farmer’s yard, as we walked by, before finally reaching the stone, dome shaped Oratory (place of prayer),  built without mortar and still standing centuries later. No-one knows exactly when it was built but it is believed to date back to the 7th or 8th centuries. 

We availed ourselves of the lovely cafe, buying a slice of Irish fruit cake to have with our coffees, and some cold drinks for the road.  Then we went to explore the rather remarkable ancient structure. 

Back on the track, we returned to the beach and the marked route. At Murreagh we had to bid the beach goodbye and walk a section of road; such sections are our  least favourite part of the Dingle Way. At Ballydavid we stopped on the beach to eat our packed lunches courtesy of the pub at Ballyferriter, which we could just make out directly opposite, across the wide bay. 

The scenic highlight, for me at least, came in the form of the dramatic view that we were faced with, on returning to the track and walking out of Ballydavid. We had turned our back on Smerwick Bay and were walking towards the wild Atlantic Ocean, except that today we were blessed with a gentle, but no less dramatic ocean, with a slight, but welcome breeze to carry us on our way across the soaring clifftops to Feohanagh. 

It was disappointing, after such exhilarating views to again return to road walking when we left the cliffs at Feohanagh. 

We went from road to boreen, or public path, to streamside, farmer’s field and finally, completey overgrown and almost impassable, narrow track between fields, before we found ourselves at An Bothar, our pub/ B&B for the night - the only pub in  Cuas, a small hamlet dominated by Mount Brandon. 

Showers were the first order of the day, and time for a brief rest before dinner downstairs at 6:30. The roast of the day- lamb and real veggies (not a mushy pea or chip in sight), was the best meal I have had for the whole trip to date. We realised why we were so famished when Mark worked out that we had walked 23kms for the day - 7 more than the walk notes indicated!  

We enjoyed the live band - guitar, piano accordian, concertina, piano and bodhran - that arrived to entertain, especially when some impromptu dancing began. 

All in all , a grand night at the end of a satisfying, if exhausting day, and an experience that has left us with a great sense of achievement, introduced us to the lilt of the Irish language and taught us much about the Irish way of life.