The Kerry Way Hiking Tour 8 Days

Settle in. The Kerry Way begins tomorrow.

Your tour starts in Glenbeigh, a small village at the head of Rossbeigh Strand on the northern shore of the Iveragh Peninsula. Arrive in the afternoon, collect your route notes, waterproof maps and pre-departure pack from your B&B host, and get your bearings.

Glenbeigh is a gentle introduction to Kerry — a pub, a beach within walking distance, and the mountain landscape that will fill your view for the next seven days is already visible in every direction.

We will provide you with information on how to get here using public transport in your pre-departure pack — or talk to us about private transfer options from Kerry Airport (the closest), Cork Airport or Shannon Airport.

Spend the evening resting, eating well, and resisting the temptation to check the elevation profile for Day 3.

Your first full day on the Kerry Way takes you south from Glenbeigh along the old stagecoach road that once connected these villages before the coast road existed. The trail rises steadily through open bogland, the sky widening with every metre of elevation.

The scent of wild heather and the occasional startled grouse accompany you across the high moorland. Then Dingle Bay opens to the north – the full width of it, the Dingle Peninsula's mountains across the water – and you understand for the first time what walking Kerry means.

The route ends at Foilduff, where a short transfer brings you into Cahersiveen, your overnight stop. The town has genuine character — it's the birthplace of Daniel O'Connell, the Great Liberator, with good restaurants and a lively pub scene on the main street. Rest well: tomorrow is the Kerry Way's most demanding day.

This is the day. The toughest stage on the tour— and the most memorable. You start from Foilduff and climb immediately into the mountains, the trail rising above Bolus Head with Kerry's Atlantic coastline falling away below you.

At around 400 metres, the Skellig Islands appear on the western horizon: Skellig Michael and Little Skellig, their dark silhouettes unmistakable against the Atlantic. Monks built a monastery on Skellig Michael in the 6th century and lived there for six hundred years. You can see why they chose it — isolated, otherworldly, beyond the reach of ordinary life. Standing here, with the elevation burning in your legs and the whole peninsula spread below you, is one of the outstanding moments of Irish walking.

The descent into Waterville is long, gradual, and beautiful — the village appearing slowly below you as the trail drops toward the coast. Waterville is where Charlie Chaplin brought his family every summer for decades. The village bronze statue of him captures the place perfectly: unhurried, characterful, utterly itself. After 23.5km and 759m of climbing, you'll be more than ready to join him.

A shorter day — deliberately so. The Kerry Way gives you a chance to breathe after the demands of Day 3, and the coastal section from Waterville to Caherdaniel is exactly the right kind of walking for a recovery stage: long headland views, the Atlantic close and constant, and a pace that lets you actually look at what's around you.

The trail follows the coastline south, passing above Derrynane Bay — one of the finest beaches in Kerry, sheltered by its dunes and the water a clear Atlantic green. Derrynane House, the ancestral home of Daniel O'Connell, sits behind the beach.

Caherdaniel is tiny—a handful of houses, a pub, and a few guesthouses— and that smallness is precisely its appeal. You'll have proper conversations with locals, eat seafood that arrived this morning, and sleep in a quiet that the bigger towns on this route can't offer.

The Kerry Way turns inland today, climbing away from the coast into the mountain interior of the Iveragh Peninsula. The trail rises through a heathery hillside above Kenmare Bay, the estuary widening to the east, the Beara Peninsula emerging across the water on clear days.

This is a day of views that change slowly — you're walking the high ground between two great bodies of water, the Atlantic behind you and the Kenmare River ahead. The descent toward Sneem is through farmland and quiet lanes, the pace gentling as the mountain drops away.

Sneem is one of Kerry's most photogenic villages: brightly painted houses on either side of a river, gathered around two village greens, the kind of place that appears on the front of Irish travel calendars without really trying. Its Irish name, Snaidhm, means "knot" – and it does feel like a gathering point, a place where the trail ties itself together at the halfway mark.

The Kerry Way's second great challenge. You leave Sneem via the Blackwater Bridge and climb steadily onto open mountain — broad moorland ridges with 360-degree views that expand as you gain height. To the south, Kenmare Bay stretches toward the Atlantic. To the west, the Iveragh Peninsula rolls back toward the mountains you crossed on Days 3 and 5. On a clear day, you can see across to Cork.

The high ground is exposed and beautiful in equal measure. This is the kind of Kerry walking that earns its reputation: big skies, ancient landscape, and the particular satisfaction of being on top of something that most people only see from a car.

The descent into Kenmare is long and satisfying. The town appears gradually below you — its colourful main street, the Blue Pool, and the Kenmare River beyond. Kenmare is one of Kerry's finest towns: excellent restaurants, a farmers' market, and the kind of evening atmosphere that makes it easy to linger. After 20.5km and 437m of climbing, you have permission.

Your final walking day is the Kerry Way at its most beautiful. Leave Kenmare and climb through the Black Valley — a remote, sparsely populated valley that has changed very little in a century. The last inhabited place in Ireland to receive electricity, it still carries that sense of being slightly outside ordinary time.

The trail crests the pass and drops toward Killarney National Park, where the character of the landscape shifts completely: ancient oak woodland closes around the path, the light filtering through a canopy that has been here for thousands of years. This is one of the largest areas of native oak forest remaining in Ireland.

Torc Waterfall appears suddenly — a wide white drop down a mossy rockface into a dark pool below, the sound of it reaching you before the path turns the corner. A moment worth stopping for, and you will stop.

The final kilometres wind through the National Park past Muckross House — a 19th-century Victorian mansion on the shore of Muckross Lake, with the McGillycuddy's Reeks reflected in the water — before the trail delivers you to Killarney. You have walked 113km around the Iveragh Peninsula. The town is ready to celebrate with you.

A last full Irish breakfast, a last look at the MacGillycuddy's Reeks from the town, and then onwards. Killarney has trains to Dublin (three hours), and the town's position at the centre of the Kerry road network makes onwards travel easy in any direction.

Most walkers leave already thinking about which trail to walk next. Some people book the 10-day version before they have finished their coffee.