Brown is a great colour.

My penultimate day in Ireland was spent in the southwest. I left the hotel car park and stopped at the petrol station next door for fuel and snacks. Killarney was a couple of hours from Limerick.

No long out of Limerick I stopped at the side of the road at a rest stop to enjoy the green as the weather worked its way through.

I managed to drive past where I was staying that night, it was just north of Killarney, but it was far too early to even think of trying to check in. I drove on through town and out towards the lakes and the national park. After a quick pitstop near Muckross House I kept driving south along the side of the lakes.

I got the south end of Looscaunagh Lough and decided that was far enough for now.

This was the first time i really started to enjoy the wonderful shades of brown, contrasting with the greens. Clouds and fog were blowing through and the weather was constantly changing.

I had passed a few lookouts I wanted to stop at on the way back. The road was not very wide, and there wasn’t often anywhere to turn around, so I had to make sure I didn’t miss them, otherwise I would just be driving up and back on the M71 all day. While there were worse things to do, I also had other stuff to do.

The colours are real. They don’t look it, but they are, and they were constantly changing as the weather came and went.

I spent a very long time trying to workout the horizon in that image. I am still not sure it is right. The horizon right at the back are mountains that are not flat. No matter what I do, some part of it looks off.

It started to rain a bit heavier than I was hoping for, so I jumped back in the car and went a little further down the road before stopping again.

Just near here a stream passes under the road, and I tried getting a photos of the little waterfall, but there was either too much going on, or not enough, it was too cramped with an 8mm lens, and I didn’t like the photos.

Further down the road again I found a little spot to stop where I could get close to the lake and send my drone up.

The next stop was back near Muckross House where I parked up and headed off for a walk towards som ruins.

Muckross Abbey is a Franciscan friary found in the 15th century by Donal McCarthy Mor. Its central courtyard has an ancient yew tree.

I did a lap, and then started walking back through the park to my car.

Despite having driven a lot, and having had a busy day, it was still not quite time to check in to the hotel. There was a castle in Killarney I could check out, so I set off in the direction.

A small section of the carpark was unusable.

I stuck my head inside and was greeted by a desk and admission fees. There was a free room downstairs but to look further inside cost more. I poked around the free section for 5 minutes before deciding it had been long enough and if I drove slowly I’d get to the hotel around check-in time.

Back in the carpark I managed to spot some birds before heading off again.

After checking in at the (relatively, for me) fancy hotel, setting up the laptop and external drives, and started importing all the photos, I immediately popped back out down the road to the Lidl to get a pre-made sandwich in a meal deal for dinner. Fancy.