Skelligs & Dingle, Co.Kerry, Ireland
There is nowhere like the Skelligs. Rising out of the Irish Sea like shark teeth, these two formidable fangs lie 10 miles off the rugged west coast of Ireland. They are colour-coded. One is vivid green, the perfect Irish colour, with lush scurvy grass and nesting puffins. The other is serrated black and whitewashed by its colony of 27,000 pairs of nesting gannets.
We came like the first people, by boat up the wild west coast, and at 0600 were before the unique silhouette of Little Skellig. A blizzard of gannets wheeled over the island, revving like a thousand starter motors. They have nested here for millennia, on the ledges of ancient sandstone which contains, appropriately, the fossils of the first fish. For it is fish which sustain their numbers: the waters are rich, and gannet wings are strong, allowing them to forage the length and breadth of the Irish coast. But we turned back to the taller island, Skellig Michael, which has a stranger story to tell.
In the sixth century, monks landed here, casting themselves in tiny boats on the great waters to see where the current would take them. It brought them to this barren, 700’ high, galeswept rock. We would have said “Wow!” and made an engraving and gone home. They decided to stay.
They carved 670 steps to a sheltered ledge under the summit, crafted six tiny, stone beehive cells, and lived off seabirds, a few puny homegrown vegetables and fresh air. For six centuries. They survived gales, drought, unimaginable deprivation, Vikings and boredom.
Today, with flat calm and a clear blue sky, it was our turn to land, and we climbed in awe to share their vantage and some of the island’s magic. Some of us circled the island by Zodiac, among paddling guillemots and razorbills, and gazed up to the white lighthouse, jagged rock pinnacles and the monk’s stairway to heaven.
After lunch we moved north to the mouth of the Dingle inlet. As we transferred to our Zodiacs, the famous Fungie appeared, a bottlenose dolphin which has turned up here every summer for the last 26 years, to the delight of generations of visitors.
Our afternoon tour took us from the Dingle waterfront out along Slea Head (where we were delighted to see the red-billed Chough, Britain’s rarest crow, feeding in a cliff-top sheep pasture) to the Blasket Centre, which tells the story of the community which once lived on the offshore islands of Kerry but finally all moved off in 1953.
But all this sun, sea and serenity was too much and we eventually found ourselves drawn like magnets to Murphy’s Bar, to worship at the font of the great God Guinness. Our libations were graced by the accompaniment of the local choir who sang us several thumping renditions of classic hymns like Danny Boy, Wild Rover and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.
God moves in mysterious ways, but I felt more than blessed as I returned across sunlit waters to the good ship National Geographic Explorer, waiting patiently at anchor.
There is nowhere like the Skelligs. Rising out of the Irish Sea like shark teeth, these two formidable fangs lie 10 miles off the rugged west coast of Ireland. They are colour-coded. One is vivid green, the perfect Irish colour, with lush scurvy grass and nesting puffins. The other is serrated black and whitewashed by its colony of 27,000 pairs of nesting gannets.
We came like the first people, by boat up the wild west coast, and at 0600 were before the unique silhouette of Little Skellig. A blizzard of gannets wheeled over the island, revving like a thousand starter motors. They have nested here for millennia, on the ledges of ancient sandstone which contains, appropriately, the fossils of the first fish. For it is fish which sustain their numbers: the waters are rich, and gannet wings are strong, allowing them to forage the length and breadth of the Irish coast. But we turned back to the taller island, Skellig Michael, which has a stranger story to tell.
In the sixth century, monks landed here, casting themselves in tiny boats on the great waters to see where the current would take them. It brought them to this barren, 700’ high, galeswept rock. We would have said “Wow!” and made an engraving and gone home. They decided to stay.
They carved 670 steps to a sheltered ledge under the summit, crafted six tiny, stone beehive cells, and lived off seabirds, a few puny homegrown vegetables and fresh air. For six centuries. They survived gales, drought, unimaginable deprivation, Vikings and boredom.
Today, with flat calm and a clear blue sky, it was our turn to land, and we climbed in awe to share their vantage and some of the island’s magic. Some of us circled the island by Zodiac, among paddling guillemots and razorbills, and gazed up to the white lighthouse, jagged rock pinnacles and the monk’s stairway to heaven.
After lunch we moved north to the mouth of the Dingle inlet. As we transferred to our Zodiacs, the famous Fungie appeared, a bottlenose dolphin which has turned up here every summer for the last 26 years, to the delight of generations of visitors.
Our afternoon tour took us from the Dingle waterfront out along Slea Head (where we were delighted to see the red-billed Chough, Britain’s rarest crow, feeding in a cliff-top sheep pasture) to the Blasket Centre, which tells the story of the community which once lived on the offshore islands of Kerry but finally all moved off in 1953.
But all this sun, sea and serenity was too much and we eventually found ourselves drawn like magnets to Murphy’s Bar, to worship at the font of the great God Guinness. Our libations were graced by the accompaniment of the local choir who sang us several thumping renditions of classic hymns like Danny Boy, Wild Rover and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.
God moves in mysterious ways, but I felt more than blessed as I returned across sunlit waters to the good ship National Geographic Explorer, waiting patiently at anchor.
