We left early enough for our hike to the stone circles that even with the unexpected extension we still had plenty of daylight left. We decided that we would drive to the end of the peninsula and take the cable car to Dorsey Island.  But first, there were important things to attend to, such as feeding my starving self.  So, we stopped at the little café in town and I had a delicious rhubarb crumble dessert and a lemon fizzy drink.

The drive to the cable car station was long, but took us through some small coastal village and through more of the winding Irish countryside on very narrow roads. Everyone in Ireland seems so calm and I don’t know how they manage it.  When we got there, I had to wrench Joanna’s fingers off the dashboard because she had been gripping it so hard.

Let me tell you about the Dorsey Island cable car. It runs on cables that were strung across the turbulent Dorsey Sound sometime in the last century.  It looked like it could have been run by a hand crank in the beginning.  The car itself was an odd-shaped box with a wooden sliding door and copious amounts of ancient grease on the wheels above.  The cables went into a building with a small window where the cable operator sat and peered out across the sound.  I was beginning to think that Devil’s Ladder was the safer bet.  But we were there, and well, there were other crazies standing in line to take a ride across, so we could all jump off the cliff together.

Our turn came and we climbed in. There were two sets of wooden benches lining the sides of the car.  There were also signs posted about the maximum persons allowed and we were half a person over.  But it was too late, the door was closed and we were off with a bounce, a lurch, and a prayer.  Dorsey Sound seemed a lot wider from up there.

After a few minutes had passed and I relaxed a bit about going to a watery grave, I started to enjoy the ride. I especially enjoyed the opposite shore getting closer.  That was the best part.

We disembarked with a sense of relief and accomplishment and set out to explore what we could of the island before we had to go back. We were late enough in the day that we only had about an hour or we would get stuck there for two hours while the cable car operator had his dinner break.  Apparently there aren’t too many people who want to spend their lives running an antiquated cable car, so there was no one to take over for him.  Since the sky was threatening to dump on us again, I opted for returning sooner, rather than later.  So, I sent Joanna off to take some pictures and I went back to stand in line with all the other shivering crazies who had braved the cable car and the weather.

Joanna got some good pictures, though. And we had the status of surviving the Dorsey Island cable car.  So, there’s that.

On the way back to the B&B, we decided to stop at a local village pub because someone was hungry again. Turns out that driving in the Irish countryside and taking death-defying cable rides are good for one’s appetite.  The pub we picked was perfect.  It was truly a local pub, not a tourist pit stop.  So, we got to enjoy watching the interaction between the regulars.  Joanna was even favored by their little dog, who jumped up on her bench seat and made himself quite comfortable.

When it came time to order, I got fish and chips. Joanna ordered mussels.  They were even locally grown.  How do you grow a mussel?  Well, I learned.   At the right time of the year you put out lines with buoys and all the mussel babies attach to the line and hang out there and grow until one day someone comes along and serves them up to Joanna for dinner.  I never had mussels before, and I was just fresh off the kipper experiment.  But I decided to try anyway.  All I can say is that they were weird.  Not fishy, but not anything else I could describe either.  Joanna had a whole big bowl of them and she dug away with a good will.  I don’t think I need to eat them again, ever.

After dinner we headed to the B&B for our last night before heading back to Dublin. It felt like the morning hike had been a long time ago, but the impact of the experience was still deeply resonating.  I will always have special memories of the south of Ireland, cable cars, mussels and all!