The Ring of Beara and the Healy Pass

Beara is the Ring of Kerry's quieter neighbour, shared between Cork and Kerry. This loop goes out from Glengarriff along Bantry Bay, round the old copper village of Allihies and back along the Kenmare River, then comes home over the Healy Pass and its hairpins.

The drive

From Glengarriff the R572 follows Bantry Bay west, under Hungry Hill and through Adrigole to Castletownbere, a working fishing port. Beyond it the road narrows and keeps to the coast as far as Cahermore, where the R575 turns north for Allihies, with Dursey Island off to the west.

Copper was mined in the hills above Allihies for most of the 19th century, and the engine houses still stand on the slopes. North of the village the R575 is, by our own measures, one of the best roads in Kerry and West Cork: it twists along the coast with the Atlantic below, as far as Eyeries and its brightly painted houses.

The R571 runs on along the Kenmare River, which is really a long bay, through Ardgroom to Lauragh. There the R574 heads into the mountains, and that's the Healy Pass. It was cut as a famine relief road in the 1840s, and it's named after Tim Healy, a Bantry man and the Irish Free State's first Governor-General. At the top you cross from Kerry into Cork, and the road folds away below you in a stack of hairpins down to Adrigole. From there it's the R572 back along the bay to Glengarriff.

Worth knowing

• The Healy Pass is narrow, with tight hairpins on the Cork side. Leave the caravan in Glengarriff.
• Beyond Castletownbere the roads are narrow and the bends are blind, with walkers, cyclists and tractors round any of them.
• Allihies has a copper mine museum, in the chapel the Cornish miners built, and a sandy beach below the village.
• Going this way round, the Healy Pass comes last, and you meet its view over Bantry Bay head on.