Ireland's Roads Less Traveled

The Conor Pass and Slea Head Drive

Just two days after my long but rewarding drive out to the Loop Head peninsula, I decided it was time for another road trip. In contrast to that day, the sun beamed down as I pulled out of Tralee Golf Links bound for Dingle.

The Dingle peninsula and the charming town by the same name is a common sightseeing choice for our travelers on Southwest Ireland golf trips. But I mostly knew it as the home of my beloved Murphy’s Ice Cream. To be so close to the original location and not stop in felt a little rude.

Beautiful day for a leisurely drive.

Granted, “close” is a relative term in this corner of Ireland. Google Maps claimed Dingle was exactly an hour away, but with the drive to Loop Head still fresh in my mind, I knew better than to trust the folks in Mountain View.

Instead, I didn’t even bother to set the GPS. I rolled the windows down, turned the Foo Fighters up, and decided that I’d get to Dingle the old fashioned way: by following road signs.

Roughly 20 minutes into the drive, I came upon a fork in the road. The sign indicated that both directions led to Dingle, so with just a few seconds to decide, I veered right. This, I would soon learn, was a mistake.

ChatGPT's illustration of the paragraph above.

In an earlier post about my drive out to the Loop Head peninsula, I gave a brief run down of the road designations in Ireland. What I didn't realize when I veered right, was that I had turned off a relatively spacious N road and onto a decidedly less comfortable R road. But I would soon learn that the width of the R560 was the least of my concerns.

The road began to climb more steeply, as it twisted its way up the mountainside. What started as a two-ish lane road eventually became a single track clinging precariously to the side of a jagged cliff. The drop off was both breathtaking and terrifying. I pulled into a “lay by” numerous times so the daredevils racing up behind me could pass and to give my pulse a minute to come down.

One of the very reassuring road signs on the Conor Pass.

The Loop Head drive started to feel like a ride on “It’s a Small World” compared to this white knuckle adventure. Somewhere in Ireland, there’s a Hyundai rental car with a mold of my fingers embedded into the steering wheel. But soon, I spotted some relief in the form of a small car park.

I opened my car door to the unexpected sound of rushing water. To my left, a small waterfall was running down the mountain adjacent to the car park. To my right, the whole of the Irish coast seemed to stretch out before me. My home in Orlando felt like a different planet. There was one other car in the lot, but no signs of human life.

In a wildly off brand decision, I started to climb the rocks adjacent to the waterfall. I had worked hard to get to this point. Getting back in the car to continue to Dingle felt like a mistake, especially when I seemed to have this spot entirely to myself. Eventually, I crested the hill with the waterfall and was surprised to find two things.

First, there was a beautiful mountain lake, completely invisible from the road below. A sign explained that it was likely dug out by an ancient landslide. The science made sense, but it was still a little hard to believe; lakes don’t float in the sky in Florida.

The other unexpected sight was a couple down by the lake attempting to take a selfie. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who parked in the lot and opted for a climb. They gladly accepted my offer to take their photo – a selfie was never going to do it justice – and, as you do when you hear a fellow American accent abroad, I asked where they were from:

“Orlando.”

Now, I’m sure a jaded statistician could explain that the odds of this weren’t that impressive, but I’ll never believe it. This wasn’t like bumping into a fellow Orlando resident at the Temple Bar in Dublin. Nearly 4000 miles from our homes, we were the only 3 people at this hidden lake near the top of a mountain that I’d scaled because of one impulsive turn of the wheel.

After soaking in the scene for a few minutes, I climbed down the waterfall, hopped back in the Hyundai, and carried on to Dingle. I enjoyed both a scoop at Murphy’s and a life-changing cinnamon roll at the Bean in Dingle coffee shop. I then carried on with the Slea Head Drive – one of the best coastal drives in Ireland – before heading back to Tralee. This time, I avoided the Conor Pass.

This was needed.

The views from the Slea Head drive made the stress of the Conor Pass worthwhile.

As I drove back to town, my mind kept drifting to that mountain lake. My wandering drives during this trip had led to two unforgettable encounters, in places that were as far from the well worn path as I could have imagined. For the second time in almost as many days, I came away convinced of one thing:

You just never know what you’ll find on Ireland’s roads less traveled.