Cahersiveen
The largest town on the Iveragh Peninsula and the western gateway to the Ring of Kerry, Cahersiveen sits on the River Fertha beneath Beentee Mountain. Quieter than Killarney, it trades on heritage: the birthplace of Daniel O'Connell 'the Liberator', a flamboyant former police barracks turned museum, and a grand church built in his memory. A handy base for the Skellig coast.
Cahersiveen - the spelling wanders between Cahirciveen and Caherciveen - is the biggest town on the Iveragh Peninsula and, for anyone driving the Ring of Kerry anticlockwise, the last proper town before the wild Skellig coast. It's a workaday market town of pubs, shops and a small marina, strung along one long main street on the River Fertha beneath the hump of Beentee Mountain, and it wears its history more quietly than the tourist honeypots to the east.
Its great local hero is Daniel O'Connell, 'the Liberator', who won Catholic Emancipation for Ireland in 1829 and was born in 1775 just outside the town at Carhan. His memory dominates: the Daniel O'Connell Memorial Church, a substantial granite building raised between 1888 and 1902 to a design by the noted church architect George Coppinger Ashlin, is said to be one of the very few Catholic churches anywhere dedicated to a layman rather than a saint, and reputedly has a foundation stone gifted by Pope Leo XIII.
The town's other landmark is impossible to miss. The Old Barracks, built in the 1870s to house the Royal Irish Constabulary after the Fenian rising of 1867, looks less like an Irish police station than a fairy-tale schloss, all turrets and white render. A cheerful piece of local lore claims the flamboyant design arrived by mistake, its plans mixed up in transit with a barracks meant for India - a good story, and almost certainly untrue. Burned during the Civil War in 1922, the building has been restored and now houses a heritage centre; inside, its exhibits range across the Fenian years, O'Connell and the archaeology of the peninsula. Opening tends to be seasonal, so it's worth checking ahead if it's your main reason to stop.
From Cahersiveen the great drystone ring-forts of Cahergall Stone Fort and its neighbour lie just a few minutes away, and the town is the natural jumping-off point for Valentia Island - the summer ferry crosses from Reenard Point nearby - and for the boat harbour at Portmagee. White Strand beach is close at hand for a walk. It makes a calm, well-placed base for exploring the far west of the peninsula.
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