Here’s a question for a Guinness-sponsored pub quiz: who or what is a ‘jarvie’? The answer is the gypsy driver of a ‘jaunting car’ — or pony and trap — you can hire to drive you up the Gap of Dunloe between the Purple Mountain and Macgillicuddy’s Reeks just west of Killarney in south-west Ireland. If that sounds a bit touristy, it certainly is; but the Gap, with its ruined cottages, Wishing Bridge, placid lakes and mountain goats glowering from dark parapets, is also an authentic glimpse of the wild place that was pre-modern Ireland before the struggle, boom and bust of the past hundred years.
The town of Killarney itself, dominated by its grey Pugin-designed cathedral of St Mary, is not so atmospheric, but a starting point for other outings. Most famous of these is the clockwise drive around the winding 110-mile Ring of Kerry (the tour buses go anti-clockwise), taking in minor detours to windswept Valentia Island — with its shades of Father Ted — and Rossbeigh Strand, where the sad wreck of the schooner Sunbeam, sunk in 1903, was torn out of the sand by last winter’s Atlantic storms and thrown hundreds of yards along the beach.
Perhaps better for the health and the appetite is a ride on a hired bicycle round the three lakes which form the centrepiece of Killarney’s national park; they connect at the Meeting of the Waters, a pleasant spot to play Poohsticks from the high-arched bridge.
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