Sheep's Head Way 5: Cahergal to the Lighthouse

Dull, grey and misty this morning but suddenly at 1pm the sun broke through and we donnned our walking boots and headed off west. Walking the Sheep's Head Way consecutively means here are few loops and unless you're camping or B&Bing you need two cars - one at each end. On the way to the tip of the peninsula, a journey of about 20 minutes, we must have passed through at least 10 different weather systems and ended up in fog. We decided to risk it and the start of the walk at Cahergal was bathed in sunshine. This is a big walk but one of my favourites as you head of into the heather and follow the cliffs on the northside with huge views of Bantry Bay and the Beara to the north, finally ending up at the tip of the peninsula and the lighthouse.
We saw:
a stone commemorating a long dead sailor
a small hamlet called the Crimea, clinging ruinous to the mountain now pretty much surrounded in bracken but you can still make out the little fields and neat walls;
the remains of the the Gortavallig mining company - mineshafts delving downwards through the rock (if you biggify and look in the left hand corner of this pic you can see a little manmade hole where the copper ore was lifted down to the sea below, preumably in buckets);
the desolate row of miners' cottages, their names scratched in rock
this tiny walkway above the cliffs complete with blue rope handrail - quite an experience going over
a blowhole dynamited through rock, a famer's vain attempt to get sand gusted up into his field
a lonely boulder burial with magnificent views out to sea, now surrounded by cattle
lots of blue bottomed sheep
lots of red admirals
oily bogholes fringed with bright green
a waterfall where we picniced
a boulder-filled valley, the mountain side loose and full of scree
gannets and choughs
a fairy ring of fungi inside the white stones marking the helicopter rescue landing spot
the lighthouse and view out to America
Knackered. Showers and beans on toast taken.

More about the Mining company here, should you be riveted!