As you can see from the photos we had a great day weather wise and we put it to good use, spending the day exploring the Dingle Peninsula. The place was pretty quiet today now that everyone has gone back to work and school after the weekend. The highlights of the day would have to be the beach, (made famous in the movie Ryan's Daughter) some more "stone forts" and a structure called an oratory(more later).

The stone forts we saw today were advertised as a beehive buildings and were not really forts so much as a fortified farm house complex. The reason for the name "beehive" is that the circular buildings are constructed to get narrower as they get higher so that eventually they can be closed at the top with a single stone. They look like conical "beehives".

The find of the day had to be the Gallarus Oratory (last 3 photos)a stone building built on the beehive principal, constructed around 800-900 AD. It was (IMO) in remarkable condition, something like 1100-1200 years old, built simply by piling rocks on top of each other and it is still completely intact.

Another interesting bit of the day was learning about Tom Crean a local boy from the nearby town of Annascaul who accompanied Scott on his ill fated antarctic expeditions. Unlike Scott, Crean survived the ordeal and went on to accompany Shackleton on two more expeditions to the Antarctic and was a member of the party that famously traversed South Georgia Island.