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Castletownbere

We start off our journey in Castletownbere. We are booked in for breakfast at 9:30 am but as we were eager to get on the move we are slightly early. We decided to explore Castletownbere before breakfast.

We walked around the busy fishing town, we walked up to the church which is nestled in the middle of the town. We explored the perfectly placed tourist information office, which was closed as we were too early for it to be open. We showed the girls all the fishing boats which proved to be very exciting for them.

Breakfast in Lynchs Castletownbere

We arrived at Lynch’s on the Pier at 9:30 am as they opened the doors for breakfast. We were immediately greeted by friendly staff. We sat in a nice booth, which allowed the kids a bit of space. We got a lovely breakfast to start our adventure on Bere Island.

Puxley Castle Castletownbere

After breakfast, we drove out to the Puxley Castle to explore the area, as we were not leaving on the car ferry until 11:30 am. On the drive out to Puxley, we stopped the car to look at some nice hairy horses. One horse got a little too curious and decided he wanted to look inside the car and to try to lick the driver of the car :). The kids loved this, so did mammy.

We had a lovely stroll around the front of the castle. This area is filled with pure beauty and wildlife. We really enjoyed our stroll around the mansion, even if it is not open.

Getting to Bere Island

We took the car ferry from Castletownbere to the west end of Bere Island. The ferry takes 4 cars and also multiple spaces for walking passengers.

Note on the car ferry– The car ferry isn’t a booking system, it seems to be a first-come, first-served operation and all the cars queue up in reverse to wait their turn to reverse onto the ferry.

The car ferry was very exciting for all the kids including the big child that is the daddy. The journey took

10-15 minutes and was very smooth and a great experience. The children sat on the boot of the car while being held by the adults.

Arriving at the west end of the Island leaves us close to our starting point, for our first adventure out to Ardnakinna Lighthouse.

Note— We recommend driving a car on to the island to take full advantage of the islands amazing sights.

Bere Island Looped Hike

The full 10km hike starts at the pier but unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to do the full hike due to our tight itinerary and having 2 young children with us. We decided to cut out the road walking and we did a 5km out and back hike instead. The full 10km hike around Bere Island and Ardnakinna lighthouse can be found here.

Hiking to Ardnakinna Lighthouse

Getting to the start of Ardnakinna lighthouse Hike

From the pier, we drive up the road to the first Tee junction and turn right. We drive down to the end of the road and park our car on the inside of the farmer’s gate, make sure to close the gate. If you consider walking this section, it is 1.3km from the ferry with a small hill.

Hiking to Ardnakinna Lighthouse Bere Island

Within the first 100m of starting our hike, we stop to walk around the old gun embankment. A few of these gun embankments are scattered around the island and are fun to walk around and imagine their history.

We continue up the gravel road toward a house. We cross a stile, Ourlittlehiker loves walking these on her own. The gravel road continues but now we start getting views of the Atlantic to our right-hand side. We are greeted with another stile and gate combination. The gates are easily opened but Ourlittlehiker forces us to all climb the stile, obviously she knows the right way and we don’t :).

Follow the Beara Way signs to Ardnakinna Lighthouse

After crossing the last stile the road stops and we start walking uphill on a dirt path following signs for the “Beare way”. Good hiking boots will be required for this section.

We walk up and down small hills and over small streams. Thankfully, steps have been formed with large stones for the steep sections and a small metal bridge has been placed over the stream to keep everyone’s feet nice and dry.

After about 1km of rough terrain walking, we meet an old horse and cart track that is now covered in grass, which the sheep keep nice and low, a perfect walking height and very smooth.

This road cuts uphill and in between rock faces on either side until you can see the top section of the lighthouse.  The lighthouse is nestled below us in a perfectly rectangular stone-walled garden filled with sheep grazing on the lawn.

Distance to Ardnakinna Lighthouse bere Island

It is a 2.5km hike out to Ardnakinna lighthouse from the first stile car park, a 5km round trip. You can have an option of walking the 10km loop walk if the time allows.

Map to Ardnakinna Lighthouse hike

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Would we recommend Ardnakinna Lighthouse hike?

We absolutely loved this hike. The hike out to Ardnakinna is amazing. The view of the ocean is breathtaking. The hike itself is filled with lovely little distractions for all ages. When you eventually see the lighthouse the views of the surrounding landscape are breathtaking.

Has this got to be one of Ireland’s hidden gems? It certainly feels like it. We loved every second of this hike.

Note– The majority of the Hike is on rough terrain so hiking boots will be required.

Lonehort Battery Tour Bere Island

After completing our hike we returned to our car and did our customary quick clothes change and got going again. We met Barry Hanley in Rerrin and followed him to Lonehort Battery.

Start of our Lonehort Tour Bere Island

Barry started the tour by giving us a fascinating history of the island and the battery. As the island has a small landmass, it has an astonishing history that touches on all major historical events in Ireland and the world.

Inside Lonehort Battery

Lonehort is fully surrounded by palisade fencing and a dry mote. Luckily, for us, Barry had keys for us to gain access and cross the bridge onto the barracks. We got a personal tour of the amazing guns, how they work and the restoration process. The kids loved the guns and roaming around the surrounding area.

We even got a tour of the underground workshops and ammunition stores. These buildings are in unbelievably good condition and a real joy to explore, especially with such an enthusiastic tour guide.

It would be great to see this battery fully restored to its former glory. Everyone loved this tour, even the children.

Accommodation on Bere Island

We had the pleasure of staying with the amazing Murphy family in their BnB for our night on Bere Island. This is true Irish hospitality and great hosts, we cannot recommend this family enough.

The BnB is located in the centre of Rerrin and sits 100m away from the northern pier. Our bedroom had bunk beds, a double bed and a single bed, the children loved the novelty of the bunk beds.

Dinner on the Island

We had dinner in Murphy’s restaurant across the road from our accommodation. We had a very enjoyable meal in the restaurant. We highly recommend the pudding and chorizo salad, AMAZING.

After our dinner in Murphy’s restaurant, Edel the owner insisted that we visit Martello tower before bed. We were all quite tired but we hate missing out on a good sunset hike. Strangely enough, we also saw everyone else from our BnB up at the tower, she is a great saleswoman. We went back to our BnB and changed into our hiking clothes again and off we went for another hike. Edel gave us perfect directions for the hike.

Martello Tower Rerrin

The Martello towers on Bere island were used to defend the island in 1796. For more historical information on the towers see here.

Parking for Martello Tower hike Bere Island

We could have parked in the Rerrin and walked but we decided to drive down to the pier at Cloonaghlin and walk from there. There is enough parking for 3-4 cars at the pier.

Hiking to Martello Tower

We walked on the road from the pier up the hill until we met the crossroads. The crossroads seems to be a starting point with an information sign and a 2km signpost. We continue up the hill for 20m and see another sign pointing into someone’s garden (Edel told us about this and the person allows access). Even though we knew the owner allows walks to walk past their front door we couldn’t help but to tiptoe and sneak past hoping not to disturb anyone.

After passing the house we are hit with a steep hill again. Ourlittlehiker made short work of this as she hitched a ride on her mothers back. At the top of the hill, there is a stile. After the stile, the grade of the hill eases off and we start walking past a small lake to our left.

We are now to the rear of the signal tower at the top of the first hill. The path starts to level out and walking starts to become a bit easier.

Approaching Martello Tower

When we start getting closer to the Martello tower the landscape starts to open out and we get amazing views of the surrounding mountains and sea. Luckily for us, the sun started to set as we were up at the tower and it was simply stunning.

This is an out of this world experience.

Inside Martello Tower

To enter inside the Martello we had to crawl through a small hole at the base of the structure. Inside the tower is not child friendly as it’s full of rocks and a very tight staircase. We do recommend going inside and climbing up to the top as it’s really fun outstanding views from the top.

Day 2 of our “Make a Break for it” can be found here

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Knockboy is the highest point in County Cork and sits at an elevation of 706m. The hike up to Knockboy mountain starts from the Priest’s Leap mountain pass monument at 519m. Knockboy is on the border of Cork and Kerry but is only County Kerry’s 30th highest mountain. The priest leap mountain pass is the highest pass road in the province of Munster.

The roadway up to Knockboy and the Priest’s Leap pass is definitely one of the most interesting roads of all the County High Point roads. The road is very tight in places with little room for error and there are large drops into the valley below if mistakes are made. Even more interesting than the tight road is the contours that the road follows, some of the vertical gains and dips are extreme, to say the least. We were greeted with cows, sheep and a horse sitting and resting on the side of the road, Ourlittlehiker loved every second of this. She hasn’t mastered the ability to string together full sentences yet but we all knew she was trying to talk about the animals for about 1 hour after seeing them so close to the car.

Overview of Knockboy County high point hike

The hike up to Knockboy is a reasonably straightforward out and back hike. We followed a fence up the hill to a T junction of fences, then took a left until we met another T junction of fences, from here we follow this fence the whole way up the hill to Knockboy mountain.

It took us 2 hours to get up to the top of Knockboy mountain and return to our car at the Priest’s Leap mountain. We had numerous stops for snacks and breaks on the way up and down.

Knockboy key information

• Location- Starting point here
• Distance- 5km
• Duration- 2 hours out and back walk
• Difficulty- Gradual climb- 3 out of 10
• Parking- 2 to 3 cars only
• Amenities- none
• Signposts- None but can follow the fence to the top
• Things to see- The road to the priest leap is great fun
• Advice- Bring waterproof boots
• Recommendation- 6 out of 10

Knockboy Hike

After our adventurous drive up to the Priest’s Leap passing, we parked opposite the monument. There looks like there is enough parking here for 3 cars if all the cars are parked tightly. After we parked our car we did some exploring of the area. The car park area is very high 463m and has spectacular views down the centre of the valley.

We walked across the road toward the monument and crossed down into the road gully and back up into the meadow. We followed the wire fencing up toward the top of the hill. After driving 3 hours 35 minutes our legs were stiff and very sluggish. We initially felt tired after the long drive but we weren’t walking long before we stretched the legs out and got into the walking rhythm.

We continued to follow the fence up the hill, the fence starts to rise out of the meadow, up over mounds and clay banks. Sometimes it is easier for us to walk around the mounds of clay than walk over them. Halfway up the first section of fencing we walked through part of the hillside that was filled with white flowers which resembled cotton or daisies, we weren’t sure but they were extremely pretty.

We reached the first fencing junction (basically a T junction), we took a left here. There was only 1 sty to cross the fencing on this whole walk so be prepared to climb wire fencing. We are now greeted with small rock mounds covered in soil in front of us, we walk around these to meet the fence on the other side. It’s amazing that someone erected this fence into the rock face going over the hill, that is dedication.

Just as we walked around this rocky mound, we walked into our first boggy area. Unfortunately, Gina walked into the mud straight down to her ankles. She had soggy wet ankles for the remainder of the hike. Ourlittlehiker loved seeing her Mammy getting wet feet and kept shouting “oh-oh Mammy”.

Overall the ground conditions were ok for us, but we had to watch out for soft spots. We can only imagine that in a wetter time, this mountain would be extremely boggy and you might even need Wellies.

We walked up to the next T junction of fencing, from here we could see a small lake below us and Knockboy mountain above us. We could even see the fencing running the whole way up the hill, we knew we would be following it to the summit. It even looks like someone has put the fence down into the lake, these are very dedicated fencers on Knockboy mountain.

We descended down into the small dip that houses the tiny lake. We walked around over to the rear of the lake and crossed over to the other side. This is the only Stile that we saw on the walk up to Knockboy. As we walk past the lake, Ourlittlehiker keeps shouting “Bath”, she thinks the lake is a big bath and she wants to get in, Lol the innocence of it all.

We now start our ascent to the top of Knockboy. We follow the well-worn path in the grass up along the fence until it crosses the fence for a final time. The main reason we cross here is that the ground conditions look better on the other side of the fence.

We can see the Cairn of Knockboy from about 50 meters away. We reached the top of Knockboy very quickly and easily. The views on the decent are amazing, we could see all Kerry’s highest mountain on the right-hand side in the far distance.

When we reached the bottom of the hike we had a lovely picnic and admired the views down along the valley. After our picnic we let Ourlittlehiker try our her new Deuter Backpack. We did a tiny little hike over to a cross and Ourlittlehiker carried her own bag and a walking stick, we can see she already loves walking and hiking.

The verdict on the Hike to Cork’s highest mountain

We hiked Knockboy in a very warm mild time of the year. The ground was dry in most places but still, there were boggy and swampy areas, so be careful and watch out for these.

On the hike up to the summit of Knockboy, the views on either side of the walking trail are slightly disappointing as there didn’t seem to be a great landscape to appreciate on the ascent. Like most of our hikes when we are climbing we generally don’t stop and look behind us but the views to the rear of us when we were climbing up were amazing, we obviously got to admire these views on the descent.

The top of Knockboy is surrounded by other larger peaks in County Kerry. The views from the top are still pretty impressive. Knockboy is a relatively easy County high point but if the weather was wet and the ground was damp and boggy, I’d imagine Knockboy would be a much harder hike.

Overall we enjoyed our hike up to Corks highest point, it was a short hike and definitely not worth all the driving but it is another high point off the list.

Which County High Point next after Knockboy?

We have only 1 county high point to climb in Munster remaining after climbing Knockboy and that is Carrantuohill in County Kerry. As we drove over 3 hours to climb Knockboy we should have stayed the night and climbed Carrantuohill the next day but unfortunately, with work commitments we both have to be home early the next morning.

We might leave the highest mountain until last now.

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