Qualla: Iveragh Peninsula

Iveragh Peninsula: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Angr, CC BY 2.5. Ireland's south-western coast is shaped like the splayed fingers of a hand reaching into the Atlantic. The middle finger of those fingers, the longest and largest, is the Iveragh Peninsula. At its centre stands MacGillycuddy's Reeks, the highest mountain range in Ireland, with Carrauntoohil at 1,038 metres - the highest peak on the island. Around the coast runs the Ring of Kerry, the most-driven scenic route in the country. Off the western tip lie the Skellig Islands, sharp-edged rocks where 6th-century monks built a monastery clinging to a cliff and where, in 2014 and 2015, Lucasfilm filmed the closing scenes of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The peninsula contains, in roughly equal measure, the geological extreme, the romantic landscape and the cinematic backdrop.

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Image: Angr | CC BY 2.5

Iveragh Peninsula: The Reeks and the Highest Point

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trevor Rickard, CC BY-SA 2.0. MacGillycuddy's Reeks - the awkward English version of the Irish Cnoc na Toinne and surrounding peaks - run east to west through the centre of the Iveragh. The range is named after the MacGillycuddy family, a Gaelic clan who once dominated the local lordship. Carrauntoohil itself...

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Image: Trevor Rickard | CC BY-SA 2.0

Iveragh Peninsula: The Ring of Kerry

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Terryballard, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Ring of Kerry is a 179-kilometre driving route that circles the Iveragh, beginning and ending at Killarney. Tour buses travel anticlockwise to avoid meeting each other on the narrow western stretches. The route takes in Killorglin (where the Puck Fair crowns a wild mountain g...

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Image: Terryballard | CC BY-SA 3.0

Iveragh Peninsula: The Islands Off the Edge

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anthony Patterson from Cork, Ireland, CC BY 2.0. Twelve kilometres off the west coast of the Iveragh, the Skellig Islands rise from the Atlantic in two sharp pyramids. Skellig Michael, the larger of the two, was an early Christian monastic site from around the 6th century. Monks built a small village of corbelled stone beehive ...

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Image: Anthony Patterson from Cork, Ireland | CC BY 2.0

Iveragh Peninsula: Stone Forts and Dark Skies

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Horn, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Iveragh is dense with prehistoric and early historic sites. Cloghanecarhan is a ringfort with a 7th-century ogham stone, Leacanabuaile is a stone cashel near Cahersiveen, Loher Cashel sits at the western edge. Staigue stone fort, 18 km west of Sneem, has walls 18 feet high an...

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Image: Graham Horn | CC BY-SA 2.0

Iveragh Peninsula: An Ancient Language Holding On

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Horn, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Iveragh Peninsula is home to one of the smallest surviving Gaeltacht areas in Ireland - the Iveragh Gaeltacht, also called Gaeltacht Uíbh Ráthaigh. The main town is Baile an Sceilg, with smaller villages and townlands scattered across the south-western corner of the peninsula...

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Image: Graham Horn | CC BY-SA 2.0

Iveragh Peninsula: What the Peninsula Holds

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Horn, CC BY-SA 2.0. Iveragh is not a single place. It is a Bronze Age stone alignment, a 7th-century ogham inscription, a 1,038-metre mountain, a monastery clinging to a sea-stack, a tour bus route, a Star Wars filming location, a Gaeltacht, a dark-sky reserve, a coast battered by Atlantic weather, ...

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Image: Graham Horn | CC BY-SA 2.0