Last Stop: Carrowkeel Megalithic Tombs
In looking through photos from the trip, I realized I needed to make one more post. At the end of our journey, we stopped overnight in Boyle to break up the five-hour return to Dublin. We hadn’t planned much for this stop, but by the time we arrived, we knew we needed to get out and walk. We unloaded our stuff and immediately headed out again to visit the nearby Carrowkeel megalithic complex. This ancient, somewhat remote site consists of 21 passage tombs—one of four major passage tomb cemeteries in Ireland. Though it’s officially recognized as a national monument, Carrowkeel is poorly preserved and rarely visited. We quickly understood why the site isn’t popular with tourists—it’s about a 40-minute hike, mostly uphill, to reach the tombs. For us, this was perfect. One stretch of the path is described in two different guides as “strenuous,” but it offered much steadier footing than some of our earlier hikes. The 2.3 km trail begins in a quiet valley in the Bricklieve Mountains, fo...
