Bray Head
County Kerry Iveragh Peninsula
There are 5 circular huts on the southern slope of Bray head which looks out onto the Skelligs. The Skelligs look very close from here. Indeed they appear like huge ships in the ocean but not altogether clearly. Indeed they almost appear like ghosts. Indeed they can be seen from many places around this coast all the way round from Bray Head on Valentia Island to Bolus Head in the south of St Finan’s Bay and then on to Loher in Ballinskelligs Bay. Every time one catches sight of them they have this ghostly appearance which arrests us and gives a sense that they are haunting us. Indeed if we draw a line from all the hermitages in this area, from the little islands and all over these hills, we get the impression that the Skelligs can be seen from an awful lot of them. This brings us to the question, ‘was this deliberate?’ The answer is likely to be yes. All the hermitages in this area of the Iveragh Peninsula must have been aware of each other. They must have felt some sort of link. There is just too many of them to be otherwise. Here is truly another ‘sacred landscape’.
