Beaufort is a small village most visitors pass through without quite registering. A post office, a parish hall, three pubs, a supermarket, and the Laune running alongside the road. The 2016 census put the population at 251. Most years, that holds.
What the village actually is, ten months of the year, is a quiet Mid-Kerry GAA parish at the foot of Carrauntoohil. What it becomes from late June to early September is the holding pen for the Gap of Dunloe. Coaches drop their passengers at Kate Kearney's Cottage; pony-and-trap drivers tout for fares; a man with bagpipes plays for tips; and a slow procession of walkers, cyclists and ponies starts up the road into the Reeks. By six in the evening the village is itself again.
Stay here, and you get the trick of the place. The Gap before the coaches arrive. The Lakes of Killarney five minutes north. The Reeks rising directly behind your bed. Killarney's restaurants and trains a quarter-hour east, but none of Killarney's hen-night noise. People who know Kerry well - the ones who came on a tour bus once and learned - book Beaufort and drive in.
Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.
Eleven kilometres of glacial valley between Beaufort and the Black Valley. One-way southbound in summer for safety. Walk it, cycle it, or take a pony-and-trap - but don't try to drive it in July.
Walks & outings → 02 Kate Kearney'sA real woman ran an illicit poteen still here in the 1840s. The cottage is now a busy pub-restaurant with bagpipes outside and a queue of pony-and-trap drivers. The drivers are a story of their own.
Stories & lore → 03 Dunloe CastleThe Liebherr family - yes, those Liebherrs, the German cranes - bought the estate in the 1960s and turned it into one of Ireland's quieter grand hotels. Botanic gardens, a 9-hole course, and a restaurant most guests never leave.
Where to stay →None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:
The famous one. Named after a real woman who sold poteen to passing travellers in the 1840s. Now a big trade in coach lunches, pony-and-trap pickups and Irish-music sessions in the back bar most summer evenings. It is what it is - go knowing it.
Technically up the road in Glencar, but it is the locals' answer to Kate Kearney's. Maps on the walls. Boots in the porch. A pint after coming off the Reeks tastes different here.
The pub in the actual village. Sunday evenings after a match in Mid-Kerry colours, the room is full of opinions. No music advertised. None needed.
| Place | Type | € | Local note |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Oak Room (Dunloe Castle Hotel) | Hotel restaurant | €€€ | The serious dinner in this part of Kerry. Tasting menu, local lamb and seafood, a wine list that the Liebherrs have been quietly building for sixty years. You don't need to be staying - book a table and dress for it. |
| The Garden Café (Dunloe Castle) | Hotel café & terrace | €€ | Lunchtime end of the same hotel. Soup-and-sandwich done properly, scones, the gardens to walk off whatever you ate. Open to non-residents most days in season. |
| Kate Kearney's Cottage kitchen | Pub-restaurant | €€ | Carvery-and-chowder territory at lunchtime, a longer menu in the evening. Honest enough food for a place that turns over hundreds of covers a day in August. Sit by the window if you can. |
| The Climbers' Inn dining room | Pub kitchen | €€ | Hearty, walker-sized plates. Stew, fish, a roast on Sundays. No theatre. You came down off Tomies Mountain - eat and go to bed. |
| Place | Type | Local note | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Dunloe (Dunloe Castle Hotel) | 5-star country-house hotel | Around 100 rooms in the grand old castle wing and the modern garden block, set in 64 acres of Liebherr-tended grounds. Pool, 9-hole golf, a ruined 13th-century keep on the lawn, and the kind of breakfast that sets the day up. Quietly one of the best hotels in the country. | |
| Kate Kearney's Cottage rooms | Pub accommodation | A handful of rooms above the famous pub-restaurant. Convenient if you want to be at the head of the Gap before the first coach arrives. Loud at the weekend until the bar closes - that is the deal. | |
| The Boathouse | Boutique inn at Dunloe | A converted boathouse on the Laune at the Dunloe estate, run as a small pub-restaurant with a few rooms above. Riverbank, fishing rights, fewer guests than the big hotel. Book a long way ahead. | |
| The Climbers' Inn (Glencar) | Walker-friendly inn | Up the road in Glencar at the start of the Kerry Way. Plain, warm rooms, a drying room for boots, and the right pub downstairs. The base for anyone climbing Carrauntoohil from the Hag's Glen side. | |
The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.
Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.
There is no bad time. There are different times.
May into early June is the sweet spot - the Gap is open, the gorse is yellow, and the coaches haven't fully arrived yet. Lambs everywhere.
August at Kate Kearney's is a fairground. Walk the Gap before nine in the morning and the road is yours; turn up at midday and you'll wait twenty minutes for a parking space.
The honest season. The coaches thin out by mid-September. The Reeks turn russet. The Dunloe keeps full service until early November.
Kate Kearney's runs a skeleton service. Dunloe Castle closes for a long winter. The Gap road is open but bleak; the Black Valley in low cloud is not for novices.
If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.
Some are lovely, some are a hard sell. Walk past, take a breath, then choose a driver yourself. The trip is good. The gauntlet at the start is not part of the trip.
You get dropped at Kate Kearney's, herded into a trap, photographed at the head of the Gap, and back on the bus by lunch. The Gap rewards a slow day. Give it one.
The road is a single car wide and shared with ponies, walkers and cyclists. It is technically one-way southbound in summer for a reason. Park in Beaufort and walk in.
It is its own parish, with its own GAA club and its own pubs that have nothing to do with Killarney's stag-night circuit. The whole point of staying here is that it is not Killarney.
12 km west of Killarney on the R562 - about 15 minutes. From Killorglin, 12 km east on the same road. Parking at Kate Kearney's fills up by 10am in summer.
No regular public bus through Beaufort itself. The practical option without a car is a Gap of Dunloe day tour from Killarney - the boat-and-trap combination - or a taxi from Killarney for around €20.
Nearest station is Killarney, on the Dublin-Tralee line. Then a 15-minute taxi or hire-car drive.
Kerry Airport (KIR) at Farranfore is 25 km - about 30 minutes by car. Cork is 1h 45m. Shannon is 2h.