Dursey Island Cable Car

The Dursey Island cable car runs from the mainland tip of the Beara Peninsula across Dursey Sound to the island, a crossing of about 500 metres over open Atlantic water. Commissioned in 1969, it is the only cable car in Ireland and one of the few in the world that carries both people and livestock. The small gondola holds up to 6 people or, according to local usage, one cow. The priority system still technically gives precedence to cattle, post and the priest over tourists.

Dursey Island itself is largely uninhabited — a small permanent population, ruins of a 16th-century castle, a ruined village, and the 9 km Dursey Sound walking route around the island edge. The Beara Way walking trail passes through the island. The island was the scene of one of the worst massacres of the Nine Years' War in 1602, when English forces killed hundreds of Irish who had taken refuge in the castle. The ruins remain.

The journey to Dursey — from Cork city, through the Beara Peninsula along the R572, past Allihies copper mine village and out to the cable car station at Garnish — takes the best part of a day from Cork. It is emphatically not on the way to anything else. That remoteness is the point. The Beara Peninsula is the quietest of the Kerry/Cork peninsulas and the drive along its south coast from Kenmare is outstanding.