The hardy monks used to winter in Ballinskelligs. They’d come in from the Rock as the weather turned nasty at the darkest time of year. And then, when the Skellig could no longer be inhabited at all, they moved lock, stock and barrel into Ballinskelligs and established an abbey.

Killarney: The Killarney St Patrick’s Day parade promises to be ‘The Greatest Show’ with a showstopping circus theme. The parade, which starts at 2pm, is part of a now week-long festival. Landmarks such as Ross Castle glimpsed from Flesk Bridge and St Mary’s Cathedral will turn green for several days.

There is “palpable anger” amongst the community in Ballinskelligs in south Kerry at the decision by An Bord Pleanala to overturn planning permission for a 48-bedroom hotel as part of a major revamp of the landmark Cable O'Leary's.

A proposed development plan for parts of rural Kerry, focusing on tourism and on a peninsula area’s historical wealth, is firmly against rural housing.

DNA samples have been requested from several locals in south Kerry as part of a renewed inquiry into the death of the ‘Kerry Baby’, also known as Baby John.

Gardaí have issued an apology to the woman at the centre of the Kerry babies scandal, admitting for the first time that the original investigation was substandard.

Lucasfilms/Star Wars is to be asked to contribute towards the provision of a public car park in the fishing village of Portmagee in south Kerry because of the influx of so many visitors

Landslides, flooded roads, and major bridges which were impassable for the first time in recent memory were recorded in Kerry after torrential rainfall in coastal and mountainous areas overnight on Monday and for most of yesterday.

The home of tasty mussels also offers up, tasty views, and a tasty price, says Trish Dromey.

Six white-tailed sea eagle chicks have flown from their nests in 2016, making it the most successful year yet for the reintroduced birds, project organisers have said.

Unlike most towns in Kerry, Kenmare is bustling even when it’s wet, and is a perfect base to explore the county

It may be Star Wars: Episode VIII but this is the third successive year the Force has arrived in Kerry with its dramatic scenery hosting the Jedi the longest.

LIKELY to be chased as a trophy Killarney purchase, as either a hotel with further potential, or as an extraordinary private residence once more, is the 38-bedroomed Victorian timepiece Cahernane House Hotel, on the Muckross Road in Killarney.

THE Force has awoken the world to Portmagee. 

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it.

Giant seagulls have begun attacking and killing mature sheep inland in South and West Kerry, it has emerged.

A local council is reportedly moving slowly with its plans for a public lighting system suitable for a dark sky reserve to which star-gazers are attracted.

ONE of the reasons Irish crime writing took so long to develop as a body of work is Ireland lacked the kind of large, anonymous urban settings where crime fiction tends to thrive. 

A call to illuminate a bridge linking Cork and Kerry peninsulas has been rejected on cost grounds.

BUNAW PIER-KILMAKILLOGE HARBOUR, BEARA, CO KERRY

Lough Fada and Hag of Beara

WE continue on the L4911, crossing scenic Cappul Bridge at the head of Ardgroom Harbour. We are immediately in wild country, Tooreennamna and Tooth mountains behind us and the Iveragh mountains across Kenmare River, ahead. After 0.5km, we pass an unpaved roadway going left, with a yellow Beara Way waymark. We could make the nearby parking space our trailhead, shortening the walk by 2km.

Come back and write another chapter, Daphne. That’s what Victoria White kept thinking as she stared in horror at the security fencing which now surrounds the Puxley Mansion outside Castletownbere. She explains why.

Many years ago on one of my early visits to the holy island of Sceilg Mhichíl there was much talk at the time of the work being done on the high pinnacle above the island’s saddle.

Final tallies from Killarney are in and the quota is likely to be 2,000.

Johnny Healy-Rae is tallying an impressive 3,141 votes in South and West Kerry on his first time before the electorate.

LEHID BRIDGE, KENMARE, CO KERRY

TIP OF SHEEP’S HEAD, WEST CORK

The HSE has said there was no delay in an ambulance getting to a critically injured man who had fallen from a tree in Kenmare, Co Kerry, early last Sunday.

VENTRY/ST COLMAN’S WALK, CO KERRY

PUT yourself in the shoes of one of the seven residents of the Island View psychiatric unit.

It’s time to search for the wellies and don your best festival gear as this — hopefully not too wet — August bank holiday weekend is packed with festival fun.

A call has been made for a ban on wind farms in scenic areas of Kerry and West Cork.

Kerry native Sheila Golden, who works with global giant PepsiCo, recognises the benefit of thinking local, writes Dan Buckley

The decision by online teacher training college Hibernia to shift its student summer courses from the Iveragh Gaeltacht to the bigger Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht on the Dingle peninsula has been described as an “unbelievable loss.”

TRAVEL time to an acute hospital for people living in Kerry, north Mayo or south west Donegal could be more than an hour, a mapping tool reveals.

People who fall ill suddenly in rural Kerry, north Mayo, west Clare and south-west Donegal are more than an hour’s drive from a hospital A&E, new research has revealed.

In the second of a two-day series on rural Ireland, Michael Clifford reports on how community programmes are helping local people to cope with loneliness and isolation

ADOPTED Irishwoman, the aviatrix Daphne Pochin Mould wrote the first book about Irish mountains in 1955.