Tralee (Trá Lí – The Strand of the River Lee) is the capital of County Kerry and has a population of about 23,000.

After breakfast we decided to check out the buses for our transfer to Camp tomorrow morning and walk the Tralee Ship Canal out to the Blennerville Windmill. Our route crossed the Tralee Town Park and we saw that a group of runners were assembling. Turned out it was a Park Run – exactly the same format as Barbara ran at Otaihanga Domain. One of the organisers saw us watching and came over to chat. When she learnt Barb ran Park Runs in New Zealand we were photograhed as “international visitors” and will be posted on their Face Book page.

Tralee is famous for the Rose Of Tralee Festival and in the rose garden in the Town Park we came across a statue of the original Rose of Tralee, Mary O’Connor. The week long festival which is an international celebration of the global irish community, is inspired by a nineteenth century ballad written for Mary, a renowned beauty who was called the Rose Of Tralee. There are about 70 Rose of Tralee organisations around the world including New Zealand.

Tralee is slightly inland from Tralee Bay and the wharf for the town was at Blennerville. However this area silted up and in 1846 a 2km long ship canal was constructed to a new basin nearer the town. This basin also silted up and the canal became disused. In the 1990s the canal and adjoining area were redeveloped with housing and a marina. The tow path to the canal is now a pleasant walk out to the restored Blennerville Windmill.

The windmill is a tower windmill, the tallest of its kind in Europe and was built in 1800 and used for grinding corn. It is now Ireland’s only surviving commercially operated windmill. There is a visitors’ centre, a craft centre, exhibition gallery, guided tours etc. The only thing not working was the cafe which was closed for repainting. As Donald Trump would say – sad!

There is a connection between Tralee and the Camino Frances we walked in Spain last year. The Kerry Camino starts here in St John’s Cathedral and goes to St James Church in Dingle. Pilgrims then took a boat across to Coruna at the Northwest tip of Spain and the pilgrimage continued to Santiago de Compostela. Irish pilgrims still do the land section of this route but I’m not sure if there is a boat service from Dingle to Coruna these days. We will walk the same route from Tralee to Dingle over the next two days.

Purportedly the route follows in the footsteps of St Brendon “The Navigator”. During the years 512 to 530 St Brendon set out from Kerry to spread the Word of God along the coast of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany. There is a 1500 year old Irish legend that St Brendon travelled all the way to America, long before the Vikings or Christopher Columbus. Although this journey was re-enacted in 1976 there is no historical or archeological evidence it ever took place.

Tralee was a very busy town today. A Saturday and lot’s of shopping to be done. A windy day, but warm and although there were black clouds all around, not a drop of rain.