The last leg of my Ireland trip was to go visit Skellig Michael. Both Ben Webb and Ken Miller had strongly recommended that I should really try to visit Skellig Michael when I go to Ireland .

My plan was to take a boat ride out to Skilling Michael on Monday. The boat leaves from the village Portmagee. Since there were no buses running on Sunday from Kenmare to Portmagee, I instead took a bus from Kenmare to the Kerry airport where I rented a car.

When I reserved my car online before coming to Ireland, I had booked a car with manual transmission. My ego and 10 years of driving a manual transmission persuaded me that I should really try to drive a manual car while I’m here in Ireland.

Now something you should know is that in Ireland, they drive on the left side of the road and the driver sits on the right side of the car. Just the opposite of what we do in the United States. So I would be driving on the opposite side of the road and I’d be shifting with my left hand instead of my right.

When I got to the airport, the sales lady did her job well and offered me an upgrade to a car with an automatic transmission for just an additional €25 a day. After a brief battle between my ego and a new practice I’m trying to develop of being kind to myself, kindness prevailed and I went with the automatic transmission. I decided to reduce the amount of new things I needed to learn all at once. It’s been a good choice.

After about four or five loops around the parking lot to get the hang of sitting on the right side of the car and driving on the left side of the road, I felt brave enough to venture out on the road. I then drove from the Kerry Airport to Portmagee.

A quick math problem for the nephews. The average speed limit on the smaller roads here is 80 km/h. If there are 1.609344 Kilometers in 1 Mile, how fast am I going in miles per hour?


Along the way, I stopped to see some ring forts.

Since it felt too early to go to my B&B, I drove to see the Kerry Cliffs, which are just on the other side of Portmagee. 

Portmagee is a small town with the population slightly over 100 people. It was named after a smuggler.

Monday was the trip to Skellig Michael. The Skelligs are two rocky islands off of the coast of Portmagee. In the 6th century, monks started a monastery on the island and maintained a monastery out there until about the 12 century.

The morning was a bit cloudy and as the boat captain said, the ocean had a bit of motion to it.

When we first got out to the Skelligs, we first circled around the small Skellig. The small skellig is home to about 70,000 gannets, which are all the white birds on the rocks and flying around in the air.

We landed and followed a pathway up to the start of the stairs that the monks built into the side of the rock. There are about 600 steps up to the monastery.

A guide at the top gave a great little presentation about the history of the monastery. 

The monks built these beehive huts out of stone to live in. They built cisterns to collect rain water for drinking, had a small vegetable garden, and ate eggs, birds, and fish. 

This is their refrectory where they cooked food.

Little Skellig in the distance.

Pondering what it would have been like to live out there.

Skellig Michael is home to about eight thousand puffins. They are very tame.

They live in little burrows.

A few shots of the waves on the cliffs

After about three hours, our boat returned to pick us up.

Before we left, the boat circled around Skellig Michael. You can see the lighthouses that they built on the west side of the island. These lighthouses were built in the 1820s. The lower one is still in use, but is now automated. Lighthouse keepers used to live out here until 1987.

Skellig Michael receding in the distance.