Healy Pass, Adrigole, Co. Cork, Éire

We start our journey in West Cork near where we left off on our one through Kerry. The road from Lauragh to Adrigole is relatively recent. Although it was previously a track used by local people walking on foot and road construction was begun during the potato famine of 1845-1849, it was only in 1928 that a final effort was made to finish it. Its year of completion, 1931, is still plain to see on a rock above the pass itself. Even so, it is still a single track road and unfit for coaches. Only for the intervention of Tim Healy, then Governor General of the Irish Free State and formerly Irish Party MP at Westminster, there would never have been any through road and his name is associated with it still to this day. The way this road winds its way like a ribbon through the landscape has fascinated me ever since I first laid eyes on this view.