Recently I found myself back in Ireland, this time bound for the south-west, in a personal capacity – a prenuptial rendezvous in delightful Dingle, home of Fungie the dolphin who lost his pod and an implausibly large number of drinking establishments.
Most of the guys turned to Michael O’Leary to get them to Limerick and ended up hiring Hyundai Tucsons from there. With the new BMW M4 CS in for its road test that week, and in on-brand green, fate was a bit kinder to me. I collected a friend who lives in Pembrokeshire and we took the ferry to Rosslare.
We made for Killarney the day before the official itinerary commenced. This gave us time to explore the Ring of Kerry and experience for ourselves what are supposed to be some of the most heavenly roads in all Ireland – and, we therefore surmised, the world.
Needing to get to Dingle by lunchtime, we chose our route carefully. Naturally 542bhp and an effective four-wheel drive system wouldn’t hurt, but going full Paddy Hopkirk wasn’t really why we were there.
After waking everyone at our B&B with that unmistakably nasal, impatient M-car cold-start idle, the following morning we left Killarney and traced the N71 south-west through the Middle Earth landscape between Muckross Lake and Looscaunagh Lough (if nothing else, you have fun wrapping your tongue around the names).
The M4 CS moves well for a big beast but, really, this is Caterham Seven country. Then it was the rugged, rallying mecca that is Moll’s Gap (named after the landlady who ran an unlicensed pub when the road was being built in the 1820s) and onto the R568 before we joined the flowing N70 as it meets the coastline before Caherdaniel.
Here the BMW was much more at home and poised through third-gear sweepers, but the real star was the breathtaking backdrop where Ireland meets the Atlantic. It’s a rival for the Hebrides.
Instead of completing the northern coast of the Ring, we cut inland at Waterville (if you need breakfast, hit the Beachcove Café) and wove our way up the Ballaghisheen Pass before heading north-west and onto the Dingle peninsula. Dingle itself sits on the south side of this spit of land, and the N86 is pleasant enough and will get you there pretty quickly.