Understand
The Great Blasket island to the west, which was evacuated in the 1950s produced at least three well-regarded Irish language writers, the most well-known being Peig Sayers.
The peninsula has an association with St Brendan the Navigator who sailed from Brandon on the north of the peninsula to America, by way of Iceland and Greenland in the dark ages, on a sailboat made of laths and hides. Tim Severin replicated this journey in the 1970s, demonstrating that the story was plausible.
Once described by the National Geographic Traveler as âthe most beautiful place on earthâ, the Dingle Peninsula is a place of intense allure, with a plethora of green landscapes, rocky hills, long sandy beaches and staggering cliff edges. The warm Gulf Stream reaches the peninsula, giving has a wonderful mixture of sometimes rare and unusual flora and fauna.
Dingle is one of Irelandâs Government-protected Irish Gaelic-speaking areas, called âGaeltachtsâ. Dingle's Irish name is Daingean Uà Chúis which, to fit on signposts, is generally abbreviated to An Daingean. Despite this, everyone calls the town Dingle and you will be extremely hard pressed to find a single person who calls it An Daingean
Many of the towns and villages in the region have Irish names too and, as many maps use the anglicised versions of these names, visitors are advised to purchase maps that give both the Irish and English versions of all placenames.
