Lord Brandon's Cottage
The southern end of the Gap of Dunloe, where the mountain road runs out at the Upper Lake and the open boats leave for Killarney. There is a tearoom, a car park and very little else, which is rather the point.
Lord Brandon's Cottage is where the Gap of Dunloe stops being a road and becomes a boat trip. It sits at the head of the Upper Lake in Killarney National Park, eleven kilometres of mountain road south of Kate Kearney's Cottage, and for most visitors it is the halfway point of the classic Gap crossing rather than a destination in itself.
One point of confusion worth clearing up first. The cottage the place is named after is a ruin, a short walk west of the car park, and there is not much of it left. The building everyone actually means is the tearoom beside the landing stage. Plenty of write-ups run the two together and leave you expecting a cottage you can go into.
The boats are the reason most people are here. They run from the landing down the Upper Lake, along the winding Long Range and out across Lough Leane to Ross Castle outside Killarney, and it is one of the great journeys in this part of Ireland. Coming the other way, the boat drops you here and you walk or cycle back over the Gap. Either direction works; the boats are open, so the weather decides how it feels.
Getting here without a boat takes some thought. Walkers and cyclists come over the Gap from Kate Kearney's, which is the usual way. By car you do not come through the Gap at all: you approach from the south, turning off the N71 near Moll's Gap and following the narrow road through the Black Valley. It is a long, slow drive on a road that is single track for much of its length, and in summer you will meet cyclists on it.
The tearoom does tea, coffee, soup and sandwiches, and it is cash only. That matters more than it sounds, because there is nothing else sold between here and Kate Kearney's Cottage, and no bank machine at either end. There are toilets and a car park, and the Kerry Way passes through, so on any given morning the benches hold a mix of day trippers waiting on a boat and long distance walkers who have come down out of the hills.
As for the name, the Crosbie family held the title Baron Brandon, and it is theirs. There is a well travelled local story that a Lord Brandon locked his wife away in the tower here, told with variations depending on who is telling it. What is on the record is a court case: in 1829 Lord Brandon sued Lord Melbourne, then Chief Secretary for Ireland and later Queen Victoria's first prime minister, accusing him of adultery with Lady Brandon. It was reported in The Times that November and dismissed for want of evidence. Whether any of it happened at this particular spot is the part nobody seems able to show.
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