Gap of Dunloe

Southwest of Killarney, where the highest mountains in Ireland crowd together, a slender road slips through a cleft in the rock called the Gap of Dunloe. It is a textbook piece of Ice Age engineering: a glacier ground its way through the sandstone here during the last glaciation, leaving behind a steep-sided valley strung with small lakes and a tumbling river, the Loe. For centuries it was one of the few ways through this wall of mountains between the north and south of Kerry, and the drama of it - bare rock rising on either hand, the light shifting on the water - has been pulling in travellers since the earliest days of Kerry tourism.

The journey traditionally begins at Kate Kearney's Cottage, at the northern mouth of the pass. Kate Kearney was a celebrated local beauty of the early nineteenth century who ran an unlicensed drinking house here, dispensing a fierce home-distilled poitín she called her 'mountain dew' - strong enough, the story goes, that travellers were advised to water it well. The cottage that now bears her name is a bar and restaurant, and still the place where most visitors set off.

From there the road climbs for roughly seven miles up over the Head of the Gap and down into the remote Black Valley beyond, passing a series of little lakes and the old Wishing Bridge, where wishes are said to come true. Many people simply walk or cycle it, and the ascent, though steady, is well within reach of a reasonably fit day-tripper. Others take one of the horse-drawn jaunting cars whose drivers wait near the cottage, clopping up between the crags in the way generations of visitors have before them.

The classic full day combines the two halves of the landscape. Travellers cross the pass by jaunting car or on foot to Lord Brandon's Cottage at the far side, then board an open boat that carries them down through the Upper Lake, along the winding Long Range and out across Lough Leane, disembarking at Ross Castle near Killarney. It is a long, unhurried outing - most of a day - and one of the great set-piece journeys of the Irish southwest.

The Gap lies within easy reach of Killarney town, a short drive to Kate Kearney's Cottage where there is parking. Driving the pass itself is technically possible but strongly discouraged in season - the road is single-track and busy with walkers and ponies - so most people leave the car behind. Bring cash for the jarveys and the cafés, book ahead for the combined boat trips, and aim for the drier months between late spring and early autumn. Prices and boat times shift from year to year and operator to operator, so it is worth confirming before you set out.