No matter what the weather or time of the year there are always walk options here … with every season and weather having its own unique features.
Walks that offer different experiences in different weather & at different times of the year.

1. By season:
2. By interest:
3. By weather:

By season:

• Spring (March to June) – endless vitality & colour – native and exotic trees, shrubs and flowers, acres & acres of bluebells, wild garlic & others. The unique herds of Irish red deer and Japanese Sika deer shed their horns & young are born. The extraordinary dawn chorus, another delight. The arrival of the cuckoo, sea birds come on shore to breed, living for the other eight months on the wave.

• Summer(June to September) –  nature’s full, heavy luxuriance – the end of one purple season … the rhododendron … the insect eating Kerry Butterwort … and the advent of another … mountain heathers … now the deer build strength for the rut and winter … a time to swim on the sandy shore at Dundag on Muckross Lake (2 mls/3.2 kms) … long warm days … by mid June from sunrise (5.17) to sunset (10.01) is 16 hours, 44 minutes & 45 seconds … add an extra hour morning and evening for twilight … from mid August the triple whistle-like roar of sika deer buck in rut … rich pickings of blackberrries … rowan … elder … a time to visit the Skellig – a world heritage site.

• Autumn (September to November) … the other great colour time … endless shades of browns, yellows, golds, oranges … in October the bull-like bellowing of Red stag in rut reverberate in the  hills … harvest time for the forager … all of the fungi … nuts … berries … birds from further north coming to winter in Kerry coastal areas with rich feed.

• Winter (December to February) … now the holly is heavy with berries … waterfalls are at their most dramatic during or immediately after very heavy rain … the strength and complexity of bare deciduous trees is now apparent … low lying walks … in woods, gardens, by lakes, .. the endlessly exciting Ross Island.

By interest

• Mythology … legends about … the first people to live here … about how the lakes were formed … about battles between the devil and the great O’Donoghue Chieftain … who in old age wanted to start life again … stories about the mermaid who married the man of the land … about Lugh the blacksmith after whom Lough Leane is probably named …

• Physical landscape … going back hundreds of millions of years … in desert conditions … when this landmass was thirty degrees south of the equator … of the limestone layer laid down in temperate seas … and then some 240 million years ago the earth foldings that pushed the red sandstone under-layer up through the limestone …

• The Flora of Kerry has something new and different to offer every day year round … Spring, summer and autumn speak for themselves but winter has its own botanical attractions … some of our coastal gardens have growth all year … but all over the county nature never stands still.

• The Fauna also has year round variation … the migrations and dawn chorus of the birds; the mating and nocturnal habits of the land animals … and unique fish populations … survivors of an arctic past, fish from warmer climes, from the far north & from the great depths.

• Antiquity  .. Kerry has some 10,000 archaeological remains … dating back 7,000  years … the 4,500 year old Killarney copper mines – the oldest in north western Europe … burial sites … way marking stones … great promontory and stone forts … some 1,600 christian remains … remnants of the story of St Brendan who travelled to America 1,600 years ago … Skellig … ogham stones with the first Irish writing … holy wells … mass rocks.

• History  … overlapping with antiquity … here all of the layers … from the strongholds of the semi-independent Irish chieftains … castles from the Viking era … British  barracks and police stations … and the parallel story of the church … simple early foundations … big monastic structures … penal mass rocks … down to today.

• Folklore that is among the richest in the world the poets of Sliabh Luachra, the heritage of Sean Ui Chonail … the Blasket writers … the north Kerry dramatists … down to the writers of today.

By weather

Killarney a walk for every weather

• warm dry days … the full range … from hilltop to lake and seaside … and everything in between

• On days that are wet, cool & wild … the more protected shaded and sheltered options on lowlands … in woodland, garden, by lake shore … to see those waterfalls.
• On warm, humid days the great trees express scents not experienced at other times.

Frank & Siubhan Lewis, ‘Gallan’, Mangerton Road, Muckross, Killarney, Co Kerry, Ireland
E-mail info@franklewisgallery.com. T 00 353 64 663 1108; 087 9293 416.

“Killarney A Walk For Every Weather”