The regular road from Bantry to Co Kerry skirts an attractive coastline to Kenmare. But for something even more dazzling, turn off the main road at Coomhola bridge and follow the signpost to the fabled Priest’s Leap – the old road into Kerry where a fugitive Elizabethan cleric escaped into legend.
Within a few kilometres the road climbs steeply along the vertiginous edge of Coomhola Mountain while the Cooleenlemane River hugs the valley floor. The terrain quickly becomes windswept mountainscape. This landscape is as barren as it is bewitching and the weight of history is palpable on this mountain bridle path that has been traversed by countless generations venturing to markets in Kenmare. Armies have scaled it. Today, sheep clamber over its moody moors.
The story of the Priest’s Leap (above) dates from 1601, when the armies of Elizabeth I crushed Hugh O’Neill at the Battle of Kinsale. Fr Archer was trying to rally the clans of Cork and Kerry into persisting against the English. One day, some English troops spotted him and gave chase. It’s at this point that the story takes a leap of its own into myth. From the rock at the top of the pass, Fr Archer jumped his horse away to safety in Bantry town several miles away. The rock on which he alighted bears the hoof marks of his steed and is marked by a plaque.
There’s a well-established tradition of leaping among the heroic figures of Irish. The Cailleach Bhéarra or Hag of Beara (a goddess whose cult is associated with this region) used to leap from the pinnacle of Knockatee in Tuosist to Hungry Hill in Co Kerry. Feats previously attributed to mythological heroes were later transferred to saints and secular heroes. Eventually the road ends in a T-junction, a left turn followed by a right returning you to the N71.
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