Castlegregory sits at the foot of the Maharees - a sandy peninsula that juts north between Brandon Bay to the west and Tralee Bay to the east. Off the tip of the Maharees lie the Seven Hogs, also known as the Magharee Islands, a scattering of low limestone islets that include Illauntannig, the largest. To the south the Slieve Mish and Dingle mountains form a wall; Beenoskee and Stradbally Mountain look directly down on the village, and the bulk of Mount Brandon rises further west. The village had 370 people at the 2022 census. It feels both isolated and central - isolated because the road to it dead-ends in dunes, and central because everything wild on the north of the peninsula radiates outward from here. Lough Gill, a freshwater lake just west of the village, hosts a nine-hole links golf course on its shore.

On the largest of the Magharee Islands stand the ruins of a seventh-century monastic site founded by Saint Senach. Two oratories, three beehive huts called clochan, and three stone altars known as leacht remain - dry-stone structures built without mortar by monks who had chosen to live as far from the world as they could get without leaving Ireland. The huts are corbelled, each course of stone laid slightly inward until the walls meet at a point overhead, a building technique developed in Neolithic times and still standing fourteen centuries later. To reach the island today requires a boat from Fahamore. To reach it when Senach did required commitment of a different order. The community he founded prayed, fasted, and watched the Atlantic. They left no writings, only the stones.

Castlegregory Pattern Day was traditionally celebrated on the fifteenth of August - a holy day with a local twist, marked by the eating of mutton pies made to a recipe handed down through generations. In recent years the pattern has expanded into a three-day summer festival, but the mutton pies remain. On the day after Christmas, Wren's Day, the wren boys still come out - groups of musicians and pranksters who go from house to house playing traditional tunes and collecting coins. The straw costumes have given way to pyjamas, curtains, Halloween masks, and Christmas decorations, but the music is still recognisably the music of west Kerry. The old festivals here have not been preserved by museums. They have simply continued, dressing themselves in whatever was to hand.

Castlegregory was the terminus of a branch of the Tralee and Dingle Light Railway. The station opened on the first of April 1891 - the same day Lispole's station opened, fifty kilometres south on the other side of the peninsula. The branch connected to the main line at Castlegregory Junction near Camp. Passenger service ended in April 1939. Freight continued, once daily, until 1947. After that, a single monthly cattle train ran the route until the entire line closed in 1953. The rails are gone. The embankments, in places, remain. The village outlived its railway and never quite needed another.

The Maharees peninsula north of the village is one of Ireland's premier water-sports destinations. Sandy Bay is a beginner-friendly stretch on the east-facing side. Scraggane Bay, sheltered between the dunes, offers flat water for intermediates. Brandon Bay on the west side catches Atlantic swells and hosts serious wave-sailing - it was the site of three Professional Windsurfers Association events in the early 2000s. Beyond the dunes, the islands hold their seventh-century silence. Inside the village, the pubs hold their music. The place is a strange composite of monasticism and adrenaline, ancient stone and aluminium masts, and somehow it works.