Join us this week for more winter van life antics. We have some more bad luck but we try to stay positive and continue to explore beautiful Ireland in our transit van and finish off the Ring of Kerry.
We are Tom and Iz - a couple from Cornwall who decided to hit the road and embrace a new way of life, living and exploring in our tiny home on wheels, La Bamba. We invite you along with us on our adventures in our weekly vlogs. We love to embrace adventure and soak up nature every day! We're currently traveling around Ireland in our transit van along the Wild Atlantic Way. Ireland has really stolen our hearts; come along with us on this week's episode as we finish our travels around the ring of Kerry. If you've missed our travels along the WAW so far - check out our previous episodes, we upload weekly on a Sunday at 5pm :)
We start this episode at St. Finians's Bay, which lies about half way round the Skellig ring. We stayed a couple nights at this beautiful spot. Our first stop is to top up our water at a nearby cemetery. With limited campsites open at the moment we do rely on public taps we find. Tom talks you through our water setup (very simple and a bit of a bodge job but it does the trick).
Next on the agenda is Ballenskelligs, where we head over to look at the Priory where the monks fled to from Skellig Michael in the late 13th century. We explore the ruined castle and we chat about how we have coped with winter van life in Ireland and how we get services. To our delight there is a campsite opening up the next day - maybe that's a sign that winter is ending!?
We then head to Waterville, a stunning location for our grocery shop! We meet some really lovely locals who we get chatting to at the beach, and we spot about 5 seals swimming really close to us on the shore and we have a long natter with some locals.
We find yet another ringfort but to Isabel's delight there's no souterrain. We head on for an unbelievably stunning drive out to a beautiful viewpoint looking out onto the Beara Peninsula. We then drive through Derrynane and are amazed by it's beauty but there are lots of no overnight parking signs so we don't stop for the night there, instead we find a beautiful secluded harbour nearby to spend the night. Isabel wakes up feeling a bit stir crazy so she goes for a dip in the sea despite it not being very inviting! We go on a much needed walk around our parkup and appreciate how peaceful it is! We spend the day working and another night at this spot. We then head on to "Abbey Island"; an island you can only walk to at low tide with a cemetery and ruins of a 10th century abbey. After visiting an Ogham Stone, we then have an unfortunate accident at Derrynane gardens which leaves us feeling cross with ourselves so we take a dip in the sea to try and clear our heads.
We then head to the first campsite we've been to in a long time - such a gorgeous campsite "wave crest camping" with great pitches overlooking the sea. We were the only people staying there that night! We head to the nearby pub "The Blind Piper" for some wonderful live music by Wallie and Vincent and a couple of Guinness. The next day we have some very bad luck taking some drone shots of the campsite.. we drive to Sneem to try and get a change of scenery and move on. We chill out at a beautiful little harbour nearby and the following day, the mood is lifted so we head to Kenmare to meet our friends Steph, Jeffrey and Sofia again (who brought their van along - Navigating Neena). We catch the rugby in a pub and then head back for some super noodles before hosting them all in La Bamba for a few drinks!! We wake up and go for a woodland walk and build a fairy house with Sofia in the woods (we think the adults enjoyed it more than Sofia ha). We then visit a stone circle in Kenmare from about 3000 BC - we do a funky fairy dance around the stone circle and finish the episode here in Kenmare.
You might notice that in this week's episode we haven't included our "what 3 words" that pinpoint the exact square meter location of where we were. We are attempting to be more conscientious of the impact we have on sites we visit, especially the quiet and secluded ones.
Thank you for watching! We really appreciate this community we are building and it is soo lovely to read all the uplifting messages. We are sorry that we haven't been able to reply to everyone, we enjoy reading them all though - keep them coming!
Thank you so much to everybody who sent us a "coffee" this week! We've been blown away by your generosity.
Have a great week.
Isabel and Tom
7 сен 2024
