More Ring of Kerry

As Paul mentioned we spent the day traveling around the Ring of Kerry which is a scenic route basically around the south western section of Ireland. It is about 100 km but takes an entire day as the roads are very hilly and very narrow especially for a big bus. This part of Ireland speaks the majority of the Irish language (official language of Ireland) spoken and that total for the country is around 6% actually being fluent. English is spoken in all areas as well. As we moved closer to the coast line the landscape changed drastically from rolling farm fields to mountainous woodland. The base of these mountains, hills, are some of the areas affected most by the Potato Famine of 1849. The flatter land next to the hills would have been covered with thousands of small plot farms that had been subdivided way too many times by greedy land agents for bosses who lived in England. When the blight hit the potatoes and rotted them over night poorer farmers lost their main food source other than wheat. The wheat was their rent money, so to speak, and when they ate their rent money they had to leave. Over one million starved and another million emigrated from Ireland, many to the U.S.. Their farm buildings and homes were made of mud so when they left the buildings just melted into the land with very little remaining. Now, they have many other types of potatoes and treat for the blithe all the time as the weather patterns have not changed that much. It was the damp weather and then extra warm temperatures that brings on the blithe. This part of Ireland, as most parts, is very beautiful. If you watched the movie Leap Year the two main characters traveled from Dingle to Dublin over the same roads we traveled. Of course that was a movie just like how Star Wars used the two islands in the fifth image formerly used by monks in the 12th century for some of their locations.