Dingle Peninsula & the Skelligs
This was a day spent in the far southwest corner of Ireland, on the Dingle peninsula. We took our zodiacs ashore at the lovely little town of Dingle which sits on a fine naturally sheltered harbor. On our way ashore we were escorted by Fungi, the resident bottlenose dolphin who has, since 1984, welcomed boats into Dingle harbor.
Once ashore we went for a ride around the end of the peninsula with a view out to the Blasket Islands. Visiting an old church we saw an “ogham stone,” an example of the earliest writing in the isles. We returned to Dingle town for a walk around and a chance to lift a jar at a local pub.
At lunch time we said goodbye to Fungi and sailed out to the Skellig islands. These are two rocks (Skellig means “Rock” in Irish), Little Skellig which is home to a gannetry of about 20,000 breeding birds. There were still many chicks visible on the cliff ledges as we sailed by and a few newly fledged birds were making their first tries at diving for their dinner, with little success. They must learn this plunge diving technique entirely on their own, with no help from their parents and rely entirely on instinct for their survival.
A bit farther to the west is Skellig Michael, the larger of the two rocks and here we could observe the beehive huts of the monastic anchorites who we think came to the island to escape the diversions of the mainland and carry out a contemplative life based on prayer and asceticism. Sailing the eight miles out from the mainland was no doubt a risky venture in these storm-tossed seas, but trying to survive on the desolate rocks would have been even more of a challenge. They may have done a little fishing and probably took advantage of the birds which nest on the island when they were there in the summer breeding season, but surviving the winter with perhaps only a few potatoes and roots must have been difficult indeed.
There is evidence from many islands in the North Atlantic of Irish monks who moved west to uninhabited islands to find peace and perhaps to escape the Viking raiders, only to be pushed further west as the Vikings settled first Shetland and then the Faroe Islands and finally Iceland. St Brendan the Navigator was thought to have departed from Brandon Bay on the Dingle peninsula and sailed to America on exactly this sort of journey. We could feel his presence today as we covered the first part of his voyage.
