GREAT ROADS:Through Kerry's mountains with eagles for company and rocks galore
MANY YEARS ago I traversed the Gap of Dunloe while servicing during a Circuit of Ireland Rally. The experience has stayed with me down the years for two reasons: the sheer difficulty of the drive over what were then unsurfaced roads and the otherworldly nature of the place itself.
Knowing that a surfaced road has now replaced the road over which I travelled I've been keen to once again cross this most famous of Kerry passes.
Thus it was that I found myself turning off the N72 just west of Fossa at the signpost for Beaufort and the Gap of Dunloe.
After several kilometres, having passed the Dunloe Ogham stones, which were once the roof of a souterrain - an underground passage - which collapsed at the end of the 19th century, a few kilometres further on is the hive of tourist activity that surrounds Kate Kearney's Cottage, and from where the jarvey-men take customers over the Gap on their jaunting cars.
It is shortly after this spot that the Gap of Dunloe begins to reveal itself in its wild beauty. Beside the road are a series of small, black lakes - the first being called appropriately 'Black Lake' followed by 'Cushnavally' and then 'Auger Lake'.
Joined together by the River Loe, the road continues to climb along the edges of these lakes and a very spectacular view of the actual mountain pass beckons one further up the valley. Everywhere are giant boulders that have fallen from the slopes of Purple Mountain (793m) to the east or from the Macgillycuddy Reeks to the west.
In several places the road winds between some of these giant rocks, their sheer size reminding one of the elemental power of nature which created this extraordinary place.
As it climbs, the road also becomes more torturous and although there are ample places to allow one to pull over to let oncoming vehicles pass, I was surprised at the volume of traffic using this, supposedly, remote road. The road twists and turns as it reaches the Head of the Gap, from where there are fine views back towards Beaufort and across the fertile land northwest of Killarney.
Having crossed the Head of the Gap the road descends quite sharply until one meets a junction where we turned south-west to explore Black Valley. This road down into the valley comes to a dead end at the head of the valley where the heights of Broaghnabinnia rise, but my reason for taking it were the hope of seeing one of the Kerry Eagles which were recently reintroduced into the area and which, I have been told, frequent the Black Valley.
Sadly, thick mist descended before I had the opportunity to spot any of these majestic birds whose presence is, one feels, so appropriate to this landscape.
Retracing my tracks back up from the Black Valley to the junction at the end of the descent from the Head of the Gap, I continued southeast towards the R568 and the junction with Moll's Gap, from whence the N71 took me back down to Killarney. As I've said so many times in the course of this series, the contrast between busy roads and the wild, virtually unpopulated places I've found close by them in Ireland is quite extraordinary. It would be hard to find a greater contrast than that between the bustling town of Killarney and the wild and rugged Gap of Dunloe just a few kilometres distant. The Gap of Dunloe fully lived up to, and indeed exceeded, my half-remembered memory from that day long ago.