While my use of the title "southernmost" for a post describing the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa was open to factual dispute, the title "westernmost" when applied to Dunsmore Head at the tippy tip of the Dingle Peninsula would have strong backing, even by people other than me. It is indisputably the furthest west point of the Irish mainland (further west are just bird poop slathered rocky bits) and unless we're going to consider Iceland it is thus also the furthest west point of Europe.
Be that all as it may, Dunsmore Head stares at us through our living room window and is only an hour's walk away. So I walked. And an hour later I stood there, in the lush grass and spiky heather, with only a couple dozen skittish sheep for company (stop chortling Al, you're a sick man). Other than the aforementioned grass, heather and sheep Dunsmore Head features an ancient Celtic standing stone and an incongruous cinder block building, the size of a large garden shed. It is empty and pointless, having the look of an ill conceived tourism project long since abandoned. Unfortunately it's about ten metres further west than the lovely standing stone and thus is the westernmost structure in Europe.
We do not have WiFi here and the cell connection is, if you can imagine it, even more feeble than in most of Namibia, making the posting of photos difficult, so text only for now I'm afraid...
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