Driving the Skellig Ring: Kerry's Secret Loop Where Tour Buses Can't Follow

The Skellig Ring is the Ring of Kerry's confidential aside: roughly 18 km of narrow roads that leave the main circuit at the tip of the Iveragh peninsula to serve Portmagee, Valentia Island, St Finian's Bay and Ballinskelligs, before rejoining the main loop. Too narrow for coaches, these roads are quite simply closed to them — and that is precisely the charm of the place. On the main ring, buses circle in convoy anticlockwise; here, you meet tractors, sheep and the occasional car.

For a road trip, the equation is simple: the Skellig Ring delivers, in miniature, everything you come to Kerry for — cliffs, mountain passes, fishing harbours, a Gaeltacht — without the logistics of the big sites. Allow half a day for the loop alone, a full day if you add Valentia, and an extra day if you attempt the boat trip out to the Skelligs. Our destination page on the Ring of Kerry places this loop within the peninsula's overall itinerary.

Portmagee is the natural base camp: a row of colourful facades along the quay, pubs where tomorrow's weather forecast gets debated nightly, and the pier from which most boats to Skellig Michael depart. It's the kind of village you arrive in for one night and stay two — especially if the sea decides to postpone your crossing.

A few minutes' drive away, the Kerry Cliffs offer the finest land-based view of the Skellig islands: spectacular cliffs plunging into the Atlantic, with the two rocky pyramids on the horizon. The site is privately owned and there's an entrance fee — bring some change or a card, and above all build in a weather margin: in mist, the horizon disappears entirely, and the show with it. On a clear day, it's the most rewarding photo stop on the whole loop.

Facing Portmagee, Valentia Island is reached by car over the bridge spanning the channel — and, in summer, a small ferry links the other end of the island to the mainland, letting you cross it as a loop without retracing your steps. That's the ideal way to fold it into the itinerary: enter via the Portmagee bridge, exit via the ferry (or the reverse), checking the crossing's season and timetable beforehand.

On the island, you find the same recipe as on the ring: narrow, empty roads, Atlantic panoramas, a lighthouse perched on its spur. Valentia lends itself to unhurried driving rather than a checklist of sights — you stop where the view demands it, move on when the rain arrives, and quickly understand why Kerry regulars consider this island one of the peninsula's best-kept secrets.

Between Portmagee and St Finian's Bay, the road climbs over the Coomanaspig pass, steep and narrow, one of the highest points you can reach by car in the area: tight hairpins on the way up, inch-perfect passing manoeuvres, and at the top a view sweeping over the bay and the Skelligs offshore. In strong wind or thick mist — both frequent here — take your time: the pass is best savoured at walking pace.

The descent leads to St Finian's Bay and then Ballinskelligs, in the Gaeltacht: Irish is the language of daily life here, on the road signs as in conversation. A beach, the ruins of an abbey facing the sea, and that feeling of having reached the end of something — Europe, as it happens. This is the gentle half of the Skellig Ring, after the spectacular half of the cliffs.

A dozen kilometres offshore rises Skellig Michael, a pyramid of rock where monks founded a monastery between the 6th and 8th centuries: a vertiginous stone stairway leads to the beehive cells (the clocháns), on a site inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1996. The reference architectural study of the site remains the one by Walter Horn, Jenny White Marshall and Grellan Rourke, «The Forgotten Hermitage of Skellig Michael», published in 1990 by University of California Press: it documents in particular the hermitage perched on the South Peak and the rock's monastic terraces (available on Google Scholar: scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Horn+forgotten+hermitage+Skellig+Michael). Since the rock served as a filming location for the Star Wars films (The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi), demand has soared.

Landings are strictly controlled: a daily visitor quota, boats departing from Portmagee and nearby harbours, a season running roughly from mid-May to the end of September, and crossings highly dependent on the state of the sea — cancellations are frequent, sometimes on the very morning of departure. The golden rule: book weeks in advance and build spare days into the itinerary so you can try again. The no-landing alternative, the eco tours, circles both Skelligs without going ashore: you lose the monks' stairway, but you gain Little Skellig and its immense gannet colony — a spectacle worth the trip on its own.

The Skellig Ring is driven on the left, as everywhere in Ireland, but above all on single-track roads: one lane for both directions, with passing places to let oncoming traffic through. The rule is simple: anticipate, pull into the nearest passing place — reversing a few metres if need be — and acknowledge with a wave. Our article on driving on the left in Ireland covers these reflexes for anyone taking the wheel on the island for the first time.

The other variable is the sky: mist and wind change fast at the tip of the Iveragh, and a clear view can vanish in a quarter of an hour. Drive slowly, switch on your lights in poor visibility, and keep the schedule flexible: the Skellig Ring is best enjoyed in weather windows, which argues for two nights on the spot rather than a flying visit between two Wild Atlantic Way stages.

Here's the outline we recommend for a full day based in Portmagee, to be adapted to the weather and your boat times:

Our guide «Irlande en autonomie» details the full Iveragh peninsula sequence: which direction to drive the Ring of Kerry to work around the buses, where to slot the Skellig Ring into a Wild Atlantic Way itinerary, the boat operators sailing from Portmagee, and the booking strategy for Skellig Michael, spare days included. One last piece of advice: don't make landing on the rock the measure of the trip's success. Even seen from the sea or from the Kerry Cliffs, the silhouette of the Skelligs alone justifies the detour onto this loop the tour buses will never know.