Cahersiveen is the one town on the Iveragh peninsula that feels like a place rather than a stop, a long, low main street of coloured shopfronts and pubs, tucked under the rounded bulk of Bentee and Knocknadobar mountains, and looking out over the Fertha river and Valentia Harbour toward the island. About twelve hundred people live here, and a lot of them seem to be in the street on a fine afternoon. The Ring of Kerry has plenty of showier sights, but Cahersiveen has the habit of making visitors stay longer than they planned.
History sits all round the town. Daniel O'Connell, the great nineteenth-century campaigner for Catholic emancipation, was born at Carhan, a few kilometres east, and the town has a memorial church dedicated to him. The old police barracks, a fortress-like Victorian building with turrets, now houses a heritage centre that tells the story of the area and of the failed Fenian rising of 1867. Just outside the town are Ballycarbery Castle, a ruin standing in a field beside the estuary, and two ancient stone forts, Cahergall and Leacanabuaile, whose circular drystone walls are more than a thousand years old and wonderfully intact.
The riding on this side of the ring is the best of it. Beyond the town, the road swings out to Portmagee and the bridge to Valentia Island, then along cliffs with views of the Skellig rocks, which stand out in the Atlantic like jagged teeth. The Ring is usually ridden against the tour coaches, which are asked to run anticlockwise, so many riders go clockwise to avoid being stuck behind them. Mist and rain can sweep in from the ocean at any time of year, and the surface can be rough on the minor roads, so ride with care.
Cahersiveen has fuel stations and shops, so it is the sensible place to fill up before heading out to the headlands, and several cafés and pubs serve soup, brown bread and seafood. Dingle, across the bay, is a good deal further by road than it looks on the map, and the stretch between has little in the way of services. Late spring and early autumn are the best times, when the light is clear and the coaches are thinner on the ground.