Hiking the Old Kenmare Road
If you do not have the time, stamina or desire to hike the entire Kerry Way in Ireland, you can still enjoy its amazing natural beauties by taking a shorter, much easier walk.
The Old Kenmare Road is a stunning trail that connects Killarney National Park and the town of Kenmare. Part of the Kerry Way, its full length stretches approximately 16 kilometers (10 miles). Despite its name, the trail not only consists of some minor roads and paved paths, but also a boardwalk through a bog, a few steep climbs, stepping stones across a river, and dirt trails that can get pretty mucky when it’s raining.
If you do not have the time, stamina or desire to hike the entire trail, you can still enjoy its amazing natural beauties by taking a shorter, much easier walk. That is what Gerhard and I did this month, and the scenery was stunning.
A Shorter Walk
In contrast to almost everywhere else, the weather in Ireland this summer has been cold and rainy. When a dryish day finally arrived, Gerhard and I decided at the last minute to drive to Killarney one afternoon and explore just a portion of the Old Kenmare Road. We headed to the car park that is above Torc Waterfall (not the main one at its base) and set out from there.
The first part of the trail takes you through a magical oak rain forest. Both the trees and ground are covered with moss, lichens and ferns, and the ancient oaks take on fantastic shapes. We even saw that different species of trees were growing out of the branches of the oaks!
It truly feels as if leprechauns and fairies are peeking out at you from every turn.
And a myriad of plants and lichens cover the forest floor. (The heart shaped leaves below are marsh violets.)
Before long, the path leaves the rain forest and begins to rise a bit.
At the top, the view opens up to vast, treeless hills and mountain uplands.
I loved the sound of the rapidly cascading stream, so I took a brief video to capture it.
(You can see in the video that the only drawback to our day was the fact that the day was almost windless, and the midges were out in full force!)
Once the path opened up into the highlands, we could see that gorgeous heather and gorse were in full bloom. In fact, two kinds of heather were often blooming together: scotch heather and bell heather.
Once we got to the top of the plateau, we saw Ireland’s highest mountain range–MacGillycuddy’s Reeks–looming in the distance to our right. Misty Irish rain was beginning to fall and the mountain tops were covered by clouds, but the scenery was still spectacular.
When we got to the place where took the video above, we decided to end our walk for the day. It was getting late in the afternoon, and the misty rain was becoming a bit more serious. Altogether, the walk entailed about 6 1/2 kilometers (4 miles) and lasted 2 hours. (A lot of stopping and picture taking were involved!) There were a couple of mild rises as we left the rain forest, but basically the part of the Old Kenmare Road that we walked along was flat and easy.
We are already planning to go back again soon, with a different starting place and more time to explore the path further!
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