Moll's Gap
Moll's Gap is a high, rock-strewn pass on the N71 between Kenmare and Killarney, where the road threads through folded sandstone at around 260 metres. It opens onto sweeping views of the MacGillycuddy's Reeks, Ireland's highest mountains, and takes its name from a woman who once sold illicit poitín to the road-builders here. A classic Ring of Kerry photo stop.
The N71 between Kenmare and Killarney is one of the great mountain roads of Ireland, and Moll's Gap is its high point in every sense. Here the route climbs to a pass among bare, rounded outcrops of Old Red Sandstone - rock laid down some 350 million years ago and later scoured smooth by Ice Age glaciers - before beginning its long descent towards the lakes. Look closely and some of the stone is tinged green rather than the usual rust-red, stained by a mineral called chlorite. Pull in, and the reward is a broad view west and north to the jagged skyline of the MacGillycuddy's Reeks, with Carrauntoohil, the highest peak in the country, among them.
The name is a small piece of local history. When the "new line" road was cut through these hills in the 1820s, a woman named Moll Kissane is said to have kept an unlicensed shebeen nearby, selling home-distilled poitín to the labourers building it. The workers took their refreshment at Moll's, the name stuck to the gap, and it duly appeared on the Ordnance Survey maps that followed.
Today the pass is marked by an Avoca shop and café, a welcome place to warm up with a coffee and browse before pressing on - though its hours are seasonal, so it isn't always open. Most people stay only long enough to take photographs and stretch their legs, but the light here rewards patience: early morning is best, and low cloud can swallow the view entirely on a wet day. It's a punishing but much-loved climb for road cyclists too, who grind up the long gradients from either side.
From Moll's Gap the road runs on towards Killarney and the celebrated overlook at Ladies View a few kilometres further down, so the two make a natural pair - the scenic climax of the drive between the mountains and the town.