Killarney National Park and Ross Castle. Ireland

I am continuing with a recap of our October 2023 Cosmos bus tour of the "Highlights of Ireland and Scotland" with my husband, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law.  You can see my four earlier posts under the "Ireland 2023" tab on my blog sidebar or here.

I will periodically update my memories of this trip interspacing with blogs about more recent events.

Killarney National Park is located near the town of  Killarney, County Kerry, and is the first National Park in Ireland, created when the Muckross Estate was donated in 1932. The park has since been substantially expanded and encompasses over 25,425 acres (10289.132 hectares) of diverse ecology, including the Lakes of Killarney, oak and yew woodlands of international importance, and mountain peaks. It has the only red deer herd on mainland Ireland and the most extensive covering of native forest forest. remaining in Ireland

Our tour offered a Jaunting Cart Tour of the park as an optional outing, and quite a few of the tour guests came along on an early misty morning in October.

The clip-clop sound of the draft horse's hooves pulling our jaunting cart through the deep forest and lush greenery was mesmerizing. It was hard not to imagine mystical fairies and leprechauns living here!

Killarney National Park is one of the very few places in Ireland that has been continuously covered by woodland since the end of the most recent glacial period approximately 10,000 years ago. Locals were walking by the road, some walking their dogs.

We approached Ross Castle and left our jaunting cart to get a closer look at the castle ruins

Ross Castle is a 15th-century tower house and keep on the edge of Lough Leane, in Killarney National Park.  It is the ancestral home of the Chiefs of the Clan O'Donoghue, later associated with the Brownes of Killarney.

The castle was extended in the 17th century. It has been restored and is open to the public, although it is basically ruins. When I saw swans swimming on the nearby Lough Leane they reminded me of the famous Irish folktale called the "Children of Lir." For 900 years the Children of Lir were doomed to live as swans by daylight and only in the light of a full moon could they take their human form. They lived on lake Davra, the sea of Moyle and the lake Isle of Glora in Mayo, before their spell was broken with the arrival of Christianity to Ireland.

Please click on the photo above to enlarge it. This shows what the castle originally looked like and also after its enlargement.

Please click on the photo above to read the description sign on the walkway towards the castle.

We walked all around the castle and enjoyed marveling at its magnificent construction and imagined how it appeared in its glory days.

Please click on the photo above of a placard near the castle that has information about Killarney National Park.

After visiting the castle we all returned to our Jaunting Carts for a return ride to our tour bus.

As we approached the town we could see some interesting architecture near the park...

...and I turned around to see this beautiful vision of the misty clouds lifting up off the mountains in the park.

I will always remember the beauty of the mountains that seemed to be rising up above the clouds!

Our tour guide recommended we grab a coffee before boarding the bus to continue our tour. I was surprised to learn that coffee has become more popular than tea in Ireland since my last visit to Ireland fifteen years ago!  I was also so happy to see this cafe was named after the folktale I remembered in the park.

We then returned to the bus and were on our way north towards Adare and Limerick.

As I looked out the bus window the vast view of the sky amazed me...

...as did the beautiful "forty shades of green" along the way!

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