Dingle, at the End of Europe

Dingle is a scenic peninsula at the western edge of Ireland on the Atlantic coast. We are taking a drive out into the countryside to the Slea Head panoramic drive, enjoying marvelous scenery with lots of green hills, sheep, stone walls and archaeological sites. All along the west coast of Ireland are numerous peninsulas jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, several with famous scenic drives such as Sky Road, Ring of Kerry and Slea Head on Dingle.

We will be driving out around the peninsula and back again, enjoying beehive huts, Slea Head scenery and the Gallarus Oratory. The circuit is about 25 miles, so you could easily do it in half the day while stopping to look at the sights, and then head back into town. You'll see stone ruins dating back thousands of years when people were living a simple agricultural life and living in beehive huts. We'll walk inside some of them and show you the Gallarus Oratory, an early Christian church made of stone.

When you get beyond Dingle town the scenery quickly changes to a tranquil rural setting, out in the countryside. You'll find a variety of accommodations here a few miles outside of town, with some big manor homes converted into bed and breakfasts. Those would make a nice peaceful place to stay, or there are a number of good hotels right in Dingle town itself.

Fortunately the weather gods are with us on this fine spring day. We're travelling in the month of May and it's going to be a beautiful sunny day with blue skies and white puffy clouds, enjoying a private tour in our minibus provided by My Ireland Tours. The comfortable coach has big windows so we got a fine view looking out at that green countryside rolling by.

Beehive Huts

Our first visit will be to the Beehive Huts prehistoric stone structures. At various times they were homes for ordinary farmers and for monks. It's a short easy walk along a gravel pathway to get to the archaeological site, and as you get around the bend it seems like you have stepped back into the Middle Ages, or even a thousand years before that. We're lucky today that some of Ireland's prehistory is still quite visible with stone structures that have survived for thousands of years. It's believed this site was occupied until about 1200 AD by which time it had evolved into a farmstead for an extended family, with the habitation sites and the corrals and room for livestock, farm buildings, and storage places. While there are many other beehive huts scattered across Dingle, this location has the best-preserved examples of these curious stone structures.

These stone domes were first built about 3,000 years ago, it's believed, and they were probably the homes of ordinary people, of the farmers who lived in the area, several generations living together under one roof. It's fun that you can walk right into the structure and get a real immersion experience. There are large slabs of rock at the very top to hold it all together like a keystone. It's like a farmhouse with a big hut and little hut, and walls around it. These people had a subsistence economy that just provided the basic needs from what they could grow and catch and fish. They used the mountains for gathering, the rougher patches for animal grazing, and the arable land for farming. A small amount of trading would have taken place but largely they were self-sufficient, fully utilizing all their resources for their main staples of oats, barley and wheat. That was before the days of potatoes, imported much later from the New World.

This style of prehistoric stone dome dwelling is not unique to Ireland. It's found in the south of Italy and other places throughout Europe, dating back to the Iron Age, thousands of years ago. It's estimated there are the remains of about 400 beehive huts scattered throughout the Dingle peninsula. This seems to be the most intact and accessible combination of huts right on the side of the road, so it's a great place to stop and learn about them.

They're called Beehive Huts because of the shape, not because there were any bees inside — these were for people. It's believed that people have been living on the Dingle peninsula for at least 6,000 years, living a settled life as farmers and fishermen in a Neolithic culture. Archaeologists have counted nearly 5,000 stone structures, ruins and remains on the Dingle peninsula. It is the highest density of Irish prehistoric structures in the entire country.

Ireland drives on the left side of the road, so when you take this route clockwise as we're doing, you get the best view of all. It's a narrow winding road, right along the edge of the cliff, but you could drive it yourself. It's very well-paved and protected by a stone wall, but it's nice to have a guide driving for us.

We're approaching Dunmore Head, which is the westernmost tip of Ireland, and therefore could be considered the westernmost portion of Europe, which depends on how you define Europe. For example, if you include Iceland, then Iceland's the westernmost point. If you include the Azores Islands off Portugal, they are further west. But if you just look at Europe as we generally think of it including Ireland, we are now driving along the westernmost part of Europe. And you can see from the scattered settlements we truly are at a remote and rugged place. We are so remote that nearly half the people speak Irish. We're in the Gaeltacht community.

There are several scenic lookouts along the way and some side roads that you want to pull into. So you don't just take this drive and stay in the car and go around and be done with it. You want to stop, maybe every 10-15 minutes, and get out, take a stroll, enjoy the sights, and grab a few photos — especially nice when your local driver guide knows some out-of-the-way spots.

Way out on this western end our driver brought us to Camino Beach (Coumeenoole). We get out of the van and walk down the driveway to get a view looking out over the ocean and down at the beach, flanked by a rugged rocky shore. In the summer, a few brave souls might try and swim here. The wildflowers came to life with the wind and put on a spectacular show.

Somehow you might feel that you're at the end of the world out here in a very nice way. One could say unspoiled, a more natural setting than the hustle-bustle of many European locations. Dingle is "far and away," the title of one of many movies that were filmed on location here, including the last two Star Wars movies, Ryan's Daughter, Excalibur, The Field, parts of Harry Potter, The Quiet Man, and Marley & Me. There's no doubt it's a scenic location, and very much up to date with well-maintained roads that make it easy to drive.

One of the most famous places to stop is at the Dún Chaoin Harbor and pier. There's a little parking area along the road and then you walk down — it's rather steep walking down but you can't drive it, and it's often quite windy out here on this peninsula that juts into the North Atlantic. But you'll find that this little walk is well worth it. You want to keep going down and around the bends so that you can see the view on both sides. A small ferry boat departs from this little harbor out to the Blasket Islands which can be seen just offshore.

Traveling in the month of May was perfect, with lots of wildflowers, nice weather, and there are no crowds at all. This community is quite small, with a population of less than 200 people, but you'll find a pub, a youth hostel, and some bed-and-breakfasts. It looks like a bigger population might be here with all these houses, but most of the houses are vacation homes of the affluent people who live in Dublin, and may only come out here for a couple weeks of the year. The rest of the time, the houses are empty.

Continuing along past this rugged coastline with small hidden coves and green rounded hills, our driver finds a good spot to pull over for another scenic view, a beach called Clogher — fresh air and stretch our legs and grab a few more pictures. You could hike this coastal route. There is a trail that goes along the shoreline and inland. You could do some or all of it, 180 kilometers, that would take you about eight or nine days.

Next up is Louis Mulcahy pottery. You might think it's just another roadside gift shop but this is a rather special place because their pottery is reputed to be the best in all of Ireland. You can also sign up for classes, or just step inside and make your own pot, with or without instruction.

They also have a famous cafe with homemade food, so we stopped for a cappuccino and a scone. Louis personally makes all these pots in his workshop. He makes all of his own glazes from scratch with natural ingredients, and the pots are blended from stoneware and porcelain clays, producing works of art that are strong and durable.

We're going to go through a town called Ballyferriter, the largest of the villages out here on the west end. It has two shops, a restaurant, a post office, and several pubs. A few hundred people live in the area, and 75% of them speak Irish as their first language. Cows graze in the pasture in this lovely rural landscape as we come upon the final stop of our peninsula tour.

Gallarus Oratory

One of the most amazing of the ancient structures on Dingle peninsula is the Gallarus Oratory. It's an ancient stone church made with no mortar at all. The stones are just piled one on top of the other for a very snug fit. It's one of the oldest and most-famous churches in the whole of Ireland.

The Gallarus Oratory is an ancient stone church here in Dingle, estimated about a thousand years old, and it's built from stone with no mortar at all. It's the corbel style of structure with stones stacked closer and closer as you reach the top. The church is in almost perfect condition showing how incredibly well it was constructed in the first place. The building technique again was the corbeling system, where one row of stones overlaps the row underneath, with the building getting more narrow as it grows higher. The structure is waterproof and airtight, forming a sheltered space for intimate religious activities. Presumably they came on Sundays and holy days to conduct mass. It was obviously for a small congregation.

It's rectangular in shape, about 8 meters long, 5 meters wide, and 5 meters high. The one door has projecting stones above with square holes in which the door was hung. The east wall has a deeply splayed window, measuring about 15 inches by 10 inches. The building is a perfect specimen of dry rubble masonry. Lovely today that it was not crowded — you could be inside the little church and have it all to yourself.

There wouldn't have been a very large population back in those days because of famine, disease, plague, infant mortality, warfare, and short lifespan. Living conditions were difficult, and yet the masons were able to come together and build this structure of everlasting beauty.

Early May is a beautiful time to be visiting Dingle, and the weather was so splendid it held up all day long — sunshine, blue skies. Although it famously rains a lot in Ireland keeping the fields green, in the summer time it just gets about 3 inches a month, which is not bad at all. They say two days out of three there'll be no rain in the summertime, and the temperatures are pretty mild all year round, ranging from a winter high of about 49 Fahrenheit to a summer high of about 69 Fahrenheit.

It's a short drive from Gallarus, and we quickly find ourselves back in Dingle town completing our half-day tour. We saw all of that in the morning, and now we're back in town looking for lunch and shopping. We have a separate page about Dingle town and many other stories about Ireland that you can find on this site.

Also look at our page on Dingle town

Watch the Dingle peninsula and Slea Head video →

Watch the Dingle town and peninsula video →