Anton is a farmer living seven miles west of Dingle. He has sheep, cows, and pigs. We met Anton in town on a bench while eating our lunch consisting of grocery store sandwiches. He frequents this bench and was a little surprised to see it occupied. He asked if he could sit with us. I told him I met an Anton from Denmark in April and he replied, “And now you know an Anton from Dingle.”
Dingle is a west coast town with a very strong Irish language tradition. Road signs in this area are exclusively in Irish. They actively campaigned for tourism as a means to preserve their town and culture, and their efforts have paid off. Dingle is friendly and charming, with shops, accommodations, and nature-based attractions.
Adam is from Dingle, working at Murphy’s Ice Cream Shop for the summer. He attends college in Cork, studying photography and film. He and his friends really like shooting analogue photography. He’s not musical but does his best to capture the culture of his home town on film. Murphy’s is a Dingle based ice cream company with amazing flavours including: Dingle Sea Salt, Irish Brown Bread, and Chocolate Whisky. Yum!
Greg and Mary are folk fans from Madison Wisconsin, USA. Greg is a singer songwriter himself, and Mary is a singer. They are participants on the Inishfree Music Tour, currently exploring the area around Dingle by foot. Their accommodation, the Dingle Skellig Hotel, is on the water just south of town. Just south of the hotel is Hussey’s Folly, a stone fortress like tower, built in 1845 as a make-work civic infrastructure project. During the Great Famine, the government refused to partake in charity to feed the starving people, so instead established public works projects like Hussey’s Folly where the starving citizens could work to earn wages. The effort did little to help the emaciated people. Many died of starvation waiting for their wages, and those that didn’t die hardly had enough to keep their families alive. This impractical, yet extravagant tower is named after R.M. Hussey, the local land agent who would have funded it.
Kelly, my lovely wife, is from Midland, Ontario, Canada. This trip to Ireland with Inishfree Irish Music Tours was all her idea. When she sold Midland Food Tours, her venture into small business and tourism, after a career as a teacher, she wanted to use her profits on this vacation. She learned of the Inishfree Irish Music Tours from David Francey when he spoke of his experience at a concert. I had my concerns about partaking in a bus tour, but as Inishfree Tours states in their advertising, “A bus trip for those who don’t like bus trips.” It’s been a great trip.