The next day was back on the Ring of Kerry, but this time
along the sea shore. I was a bit annoyed when my first stop, Ballycarberee
Castle, was closed to the public, but this was quickly forgotten when I
accidentally found a couple of ancient stone forts nearby. When I wandered into
the first one, which has been beautifully preserved, I was quite alone, and
happily wandered through what would have one been a stone house in the middle
of the fort. I climbed up the steps of the outer wall and peered over it,
trying to imagine what the landscape would have looked like millenia ago – a period
of time that in itself I find difficult to get my head around.
When other tourists arrived to disturb my serene imaginings,
I decamped to the other fort nearby, and although it was more difficult to
reach (through a sheep-y field full of mud like you would not believe), and
less well cared for than the first, it was much more interesting – featuring the
remnants of four houses (I had always wondered how they managed to squeeze
multiple habitations into these comparatively small areas), an underground
drain, and best of all, a couple of underground tunnels leading to rooms in the
metres-thick walls of the fort itself. It is thought that in times gone by
these spaces were used for storage, or as hiding-places in the event that
unwanted visitors made it through the defences of the fort itself.
Peering over the walls of this fort, you could see the first
one, similarly perched on a hilltop only a few hundred metres away. I wondered
what the relationship between the inhabitants of the forts was – whether they
were friendly with one another, or whether they had built the forts in part as
a show of strength one against the other, and glared balefully at one another
over the ramparts.