Driver squeezes in overnight Kerry stay due to pier pressure

He boldly drove where no car drove before and in doing so, unwittingly shifted the limelight from Skellig Michael to An Blascaod Mór.

A disorientated Clareman looking forward to a spot of camping in the Kingdom took a turn for the worse around 9pm on Tuesday when he decided to drive down the pier in Dunquin from where the ferry departs for the Blasket Islands. Within minutes, both driver and Hyundai found themselves wedged in a spot so tight that neither car nor Clareman could find a way out. And so they remained overnight.

His plight was discovered early yesterday when the crew of Blasket Island Ferries came upon what looked like a movie scene.

“Other cars have managed to get a third of the way down and we’ve had a tractor pull them out. But this guy navigated two really tight bends before he got stuck,” said Sibéal Ní Lubhaing, spokeserson for the ferry company.

With the ferry scheduled to bring passengers to the islands, Sibéal posted a photograph of the wedged car on Blasket Island Ferries Facebook page to explain possible delays. By yesterday afternoon, she had fielded calls from Radio Kerry to the BBC.

“I couldn’t believe it. The night before I posted a photo of a Great Blasket sheep. It had 80 ‘likes’ the following day. A couple of hours after posting the photo of the car, there were thousands of likes,” she said.

Sibéal believes the man may have mistakenly believed he was heading down the narrow road to nearby Coumeenoule Beach from where it is possible to turn a vehicle. “With the help of local gardaí, he managed to escape through the car boot, terribly embarrassed and deeply shocked,” she said. A bobcat was brought from Dingle to extricate the car, slightly the worse for wear.

Intending ferry passengers bore the delay mainly with good humour, and the trapped Bannerman emerged to a sizeable audience.