We live in the central part of the south coast of Ireland, and if you go further west you have three peninsulas that belong to county Cork, and to the north of them there are a few other peninsulas that belong to county Kerry. You may have heard of the famous Ring of Kerry and Dingle peninsula. Both fabulous areas, but the West Cork peninsulas shouldn’t be underrated… there’s the Mizen head peninsula (although, it’s very possible it actually has another name), Sheep’s head peninsula, and the northern one which is the Beara peninsula. To get to Beara you need to go to Bantry and then Glengarriff, which is a lovely little town.

Glengarriff has a lot to offer that we need to explore more. There are ferries to Whiddy island and also to Garnish island, that is famous for its subtropical plants, and there is a large nature reserve where you can walk around in the forest. I’m very interested in going to Garnish island but that won’t happen this year. There’s also, on the way between Glengarriff to Kenmare, a nice little knitwear shop at the location where there used to be an illegal poitín distillery. As far as I know it’s named after the distillery, Molly Gallivan’s. The old still is in the back garden! Very cool, and we often stop by there when we’re in the area.

When we’ve travelled along that way, we’ve seen information about something called “Bamboo park”. In the beginning of August we finally decided to go and see what it’s about. I expected a small, nice garden with some tropical plants. Instead it turned out to be a HUGE area with paths for walking along the bay and in a vast garden with patches of forests where there are patches of bamboo and tropical plants mixed with ordinary plants.

So, let me take you on a walk through that forest!

Thank you, everyone who commented on my last post. It was a bit of therapy to write the post and afterwards I could sort of let the negativity go. You had lots of good encouraging thoughts and reading them all made me smile!

Recently we had the first in-person camera club meeting since before Covid. It was very pleasant and afterwards I felt inspired again, and that I’m part of this group of people with this common interest and there is no reason to compare my work with theirs (or anyone else’s) but we can instead inspire and encourage each other. I think all the negativity I’ve experienced must be a Zoom thing – Zoom is a wonderful tool but it can never be like a real meeting – it’s very difficult to have a proper conversation there so someone’s opinions easily become “the absolute truth” while in photography there are a lot of ifs and buts.

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I’m linking this post with Denyse Whelan’s Wednesday words & pics.