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Bonane Heritage Park

Been travelling pretty much non-stop for the last two months, so couldn’t post anything here for love or money. (Hell, that’s my excuse anyway.) During a brief period back in Ireland during that time, I did, however, manage to do a little tour around and discovered Bonane Heritage Park. I had previously never even heard about it and came across it purely by chance when passing through Kenmare.

A little research online showed that this park is a very recent development and only opened to the public in June this year. It is based outside of Bonane, near Kenmare.

It is a community run project and charges a ridiculously low entrance fee of just €2.00… which is pretty much unheard of in this day and age for Ireland and borders at being practically free of charge. The volunteers who are manning the entrance booth all seem to be incredibly eager to help with whatever info you may like to know from them. Their enthusiasm for the project clearly shows and is a real tonic in comparison to some bored and disinterested hired assistants you may find in some of the other better known tourist attractions all around Ireland.

If you can, bring some food for a picnic. At the start of the walk, you can find some benches with beautiful views that will invite you to just while away some time before you approach the proper 3km long circular walk that contains half a dozen archaeological artefacts that give an insight into the life of early settlers: a ring fort (some 1500 years old), a famine ruin, a stone circle and boulder burial, a fulacht fiadh (ancient cooking pit), a bullaun stone (large rock with a carved out basin used for…. no-one knows exactly what) and a standing stone.

Overall, this truly is a little undiscovered secret. A project so new, and yet so old, that it has yet to find its way into Irish guide books. Come on a clear day and you can see for miles over the Bantry/Kenmare countryside. The location is so wonderfully off the beaten track that you can easily get lost on the narrow, unmarked dirt roads that lead to and from the site. Believe me, we did… and loved every minute of it.