Gap of Dunloe

The weather forecast for our day nine had been pretty good, so we wanted to use the day for our hiking trip through the Gap of Dunloe. We booked the trip "the wrong way round" - starting our journey with a boat ride through the Killarney Lakes, and then walking though the famous gap, where we'd be picked up again at the end.

We started the tour in a Vintage Bus at O'Connors Pub in Killarney. The bus took us out to Ross Castle, where we transfered into a small wooden boat.

Then the ride across the Killarney Lakes began. First we crossed the biggest lake, Lough Leane, until we came to the Meeting of the Waters.

There we started following the Upper Lake toward Lord Brandon's Cottage. The whole boat trip took approximately one and a half hours and brought us to some beautiful vistas we would never have experienced if it hadn't been for the boat trip.

At Lord Brandons Cottage we started our hike. The first few steps wind through a little forest. Then our way led up towards the Gap. That part of the hike was really exhausting, as today was also a pretty warm day. Yeah, the pictures don't look like it, but it was warm! 

The nice thing about doing the trip this way, though, is that you first have a short, fairly steep ascend, but then you have a beautiful view down the Gap of Dunloe for the rest of your trip. Also it's kind of nice to have the exhausting part done early, have a nice little picnic at the "pass", and then just kind of stroll down towards Kate Kearney's Cottage.

We had taken our picnic a bit to seriously and so on the way back we couldn't stop all too often to take pictures, but there were so many beautiful views it really was hard on us. We could have spent the whole day up there.

Oh and how about a little anecdote: On our way down we passed a pretty funny scene, as some people were obviously shooting a film there. We didn't get close enough to actually have a good view of it, but it seemed there were some film students shooting some historical scene.