Cahersiveen Travel Guide

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Sunday was the most beautiful sunny day to climb the Benette Loop Walk. We saw some fantastic scenery and wild flowers. Here is just a sample

What to buy: the town's most famous living musician, and a nationally recognised treasure, Sean Garvey, who is an also outstanding sean-nos singer. Get his c.d's on the web or through Quirkes Newsagent in the town and lay back and listen to the towns most famous song The Boys of Barr na Sraide and other big songs.

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From the bus, I was able to get a very blurry photo of the ruins of Carhan House where Daniel O'Connell was born in 1775. There is a bust of him (almost visible in photo 3) next to the ruins.

The guide told us a lot of stories about how great a man Dónal Ó Conaill (his Irish name), known as The Liberator or The Emancipator, was. He was Ireland's predominant political leader in the first half of the nineteenth century who championed the cause of the Catholic tenants and small-landholders and campaigned for Catholic Emancipation - the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament, denied for over 100 years - and Repeal of the Union between Ireland and Great Britain.

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Favorite thing: I was interested to find out that Saint Brendan is the Patron Saint of the United States Navy since my husband spent 20 years serving his country in the Navy. Saint Brendan of Clonfert or Bréanainn of Clonfert (c. 484 – c. 577) called "the Navigator", "the Voyager", or "the Bold" is one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.. He is chiefly renowned for his legendary quest to the "Isle of the Blessed," also called St. Brendan's Island. The Voyage of St. Brendan could be called an immram (Irish navigational story). The people who have a mail forwarding service for yachts have named their company St. Brendan's Isle.

Saint Brendan's feast day is celebrated on May 16

As we approached Cahirciveen our guide told us to look out on the right for a modern sculpture of St. Brendan the Navigator in his coracle or curragh. Supposedly, this is the kind of little boat in which the saint travelled to America many centuries before Columbus. (In 1978 Tim Severin built a replica curragh called the Brendan in which he retraced this voyage, proving that it could have been done.)